LANGUAGE DEVIATION

Lexical Deviation
 Associated with neologism
(misunderstood as a ‘violation of
lexical rule’)
Neologism, or the invention of new
words: one of the more obvious ways
in which a literary writer may exceed
the normal resources of the language.
Lexical innovation: mostly in the
category of NONCE-
FORMATIONS (made up ‘for the
nonce’), i.e., for a single occasion
only (temporarily), rather than
serious attempts to add to the word
stock for some new need.
 Examples:
In the English rule of word-formation: the
pre-fixation of fore to a verb conveys the
meaning ‘before hand’: foresee, foretell and
foreknow.
Without noticing oddity, literature writers
use verbs such as foresell or foreappear.
In T.S Elliot The Waste Land: foresuffer in
the line ‘And I Tiresias have foresuffered all’
Gerard Manley Hopkin’s: widow-
making, unchilding and unfathering
(from The Wreck of the Deutschland).
Quite a number of widely used
English words originated in poetry,
such as assassination (Shakespeare),
blatant (Spenser), casuistry (Pope)
• Horace Walpole, the author of the 1st
Gothic novel (The Castle of Otranto):
coining “betweenity” to mean
“intermediateness”
“Touch-me-not-ishness”: having a
“touch-me-not“ character
“Witchcraftical”: the exercise of
supernatural power possessed by a
person in league with the evil spirits.
There was a balconyful of
gentlemen
-Chesterton
We left the town refreshed and
rehatted
-Fotherhill
The use of onomatopea : “Tattarrattat”, coined
by James Joyce in “Ulysses” back in 1922,
refering to a knock at the door.

Taken from popular books or movies:

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (from a
musical movie “Mary Poppins”): a descriptive
term expressing one’s enthusiasm for the
greatness of a particular object/event;
quark in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake:
describing a certain type of cry.
Lexical deviation can also be: a new
meaning for an old word used on only
particular occasion.

“Don’t be such a harsh parent, father!”

“Don’t father me!”
H.G. Wells
Grammatical Deviation
A. Morphological deviations: (adding
affixes to words which they would
not usually have/ removing their
usual affixes)
museyroom referring “museum”, and
eggtentical (egg & identical) in James
Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake;
She dwelt among the untrodden (not have
been walked on) ways (Wordsworth)
B. Syntactic deviations: (disregarding
the rules of sentence)
1) bad or incorrect grammar

 Examples:
I doesn’t like him.
I know not

Saw you anything?

He me saw.
2) syntactic rearrangement
 Examples:
• She walks in beauty, like the night
(Byron)
• Beauty is truth, truth beauty (Keats)
• The just man justices (in As Kingfishers
Catch Fire)
Some ‘asyntactic’ styles which have made their
appearance in modern literature:
 The Wanderer
There head falls forward, fatigued at evening,
And dreams of home,
Waving from window, spread of welcome,
Kissing of wife under single sheet,
But waking sees
Bird-flocks nameless to him, through doorway
voices
Of new men making another love.
In “The Wanderer” Auden evolves a
subjectless, articleless style which
apparently suggests the exile’s loss of a
sense of identity.
Phonological Deviation
There are basically two types of
deviation: 1) conventional licences of
verse composition and 2) special
pronunciation for the convenience of
rhyming
The first kinds of phonological
deviations are aphesis, syncope and
apocope.
Aphesis : the omission of an initial part
of a word or phrase ‘tis, ‘mid, ‘lone
Syncope: the omission of a medial
part
Ne’er, o’er, pow’r
Apocope : the omission of a final
part
oft (often), o’ (of), a’ (all), wi’(with)
The second-type example: the noun wind is
pronounced like the verb wind:

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
(P.B. Shelley, Ode to the West Wind)
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
and the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
while the sands o’life shall run.
(Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose)
Through conventional licences of verse
composition poets change the
pronunciations of the original words to
make the words better and to more easily
arrange sound patterns to achieve their
intended communicative effects.
Poetic licence is a writer’s privilege to
depart from some expected standard.
Graphological Deviation
To the extent that spelling represents
pronunciation, any strangeness of
pronunciation will be reflected by a
strangeness of written form (lineation).
Two American poets who explore
possibilities of purely visual patterning in
poetry are William Carlos Williams and
E.E. Cummings.
Cummings is well-known for his use of
other types of orthographic deviation:
discarding of capital letters and
punctuation where convention calls for
them, jumbling of words, eccentric use
of parentheses, etc.
Examples:
Ariel to Miranda: - Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee… (Shelley)

Pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease;
your victim(death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
Shape of Text:
An unconventional design
R. Draper’s “Target Practice”
The poem is shaped like a bull’s eye
(uniqueness and originality)
• Type of Print:
Italics, bold print, capitalization and
decapitalization, etc.
E.E. Cumming’s “Me up at does”
Me up at does
out of the floor
quitely Stare
a poisened mouse

still who alive

is asking What
have i done that
You wouldn’t have
The first letter of each line should be capitalized
Cumming capitalized the first letter of the
opening line and that of the closing line so that
the two words Me and You stand out and become
stylistically prominent.
The poet may intend to have the reader see that
the addresser (Me and You) considered himself to
be superior to the mouse.
Since i is the self-address of the mouse, the
decapitalisation may demonstrate that the mouse
wishes to show its humbleness.
Grammetrics:

the ways in which grammatical

units are fitted into metrical units
such as lines and stanzas.
This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the ice box

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
The title does not stand on its own: it is the
main clause of the 1st sentence which runs
over the first two stanzas.
The poet may intend the poem to be read as
a whole
The absence of punctuation makes us
expect one.
The sense of incompleteness: We would
naturally move on to find out what follows.
Semantic Deviation
Semantic deviation can be meant as
‘non-sense’ or ‘absurdity’, so long as we
realize that sense is used, in this
context, in a strictly literal-minded way.
Transference of meaning
Examples:
I am not yet born; O hear me. (Louis
MacNeice’s Prayer before Birth)
The child is father of the man.
(Wordsworth’s My Heart Leaps Up)
She was a phantom of delight
(Shakespeare)
Beauty is truth, truth beauty (Keats)
Siapa sungai yang paling derai?
The borrowing of features of socially or
Dialectal Deviation (Dialectism)

regionally defined dialects

A minor form of license not generally available
to the average writer of functional prose, who is
expected to write in the generally accepted and
understood dialect known as ‘standard’
Example:
heydeguyes (a type of dance) and rontes
(young bullocks) in Spenser’s The Shepheardes
Calendar
Deviation
The ofuse of a certain register in a wrong domain
Register

Register borrowing in poetry is often accompanied by

the further incongruity of register mixing, or the use in
the same text of features characteristic of different
registers.
For example: 
In Auden’s Letter to Lord Byron:
And many a bandit, not so gently born
Kills vermin every winter with the Quorn

Quorn (BrE trademark a vegetable substance that can

be used in cooking instead of meat)
Deviation of Historical Period
The use of linguistic heritage, including
dead languages such as Latin and Greek and
archaism ‘the survival of the language of the
past into the language of present’.
For example:
In T.S. Elliot’s East Cooker:
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie-