English Linguistics & Literature

On those days when you miss someone the most, as though your memories are sharp enough to slice through skin and bone, remember how they loved you.

Remember how they loved you and do that, for yourself.

In their name, in their honour.

Love yourself, as they loved you.

They would like that.

On those days when you miss someone the most,

love yourself harder.

~ 'On Those Days' from 'Loss' Poems to Better Weather the Many Waves of Grief by Donna Ashworth

~ Art by Duy Huynh

Ice Candy Man: Bapsi Sidhwa

Iceman Candy is a novel that pictures and explains the condition of India and Pakistan during the civil war or protests or riots due to the India- Pakistan partition. The novel, a renamed version of Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa, was first published in the 1980s.

The book "Cracking India" (initially published as "Ice-Candy-Man" in 1980) written by Bapsi Sidhwa delves into the brutal civil war that took place during the Partition of India in 1947.

Ice candy man is a story of a historical event that marked a period or timeline of political and social turmoil, which was done to give independence and lead to the subsequent division of the country. The story of the ice man candy gives us a brief narrative of the results or consequences of religious intolerance and religious outbreak, which further led to violence and dangas in many parts of the country which called for widespread violence, and massacres around the country mainly regions of high intense areas such as Kashmir and Punjab, brutal killings of infants, child, men, and women. Millions of Hindus from Pakistan have had refuge in parts of north India while Muslims fled to Pakistan, which caused massive flee of people across the newly created borders.

Narrated from the perspective of Lenny Sethi, a young Parsee girl, the novel depicts the intricate and ever-changing political and social consequences of the Partition of India. It took so much that it divided the country into India, the Hindu majority, and the Muslim- majority Pakistan. Lenny shares her experience of how Lahore, which was initially in India, is now closely transforming into Pakistani Lahore, and its transformations have made it more different.

The novel explores the historical events and serves as a coming-of-age tale, delving into Lenny's personal growth and forming her identity amid a changing nation. Both Lenny and Pakistan undergo significant struggles as they navigate through the turmoil. Lenny's innocent perspective quickly matures as she witnesses the violence, loss of friends, and betrayal among neighbors due to religious differences. The devastating toll of dividing a nation along religious lines is vividly portrayed, affecting Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and Parsees alike as they all strive to survive.

As a minority group, the Parsee community initially seeks alliances with other ethnic groups for protection but ultimately chooses to remain neutral, hoping to remain inconspicuous. The early part of the novel presents Lenny's idyllic childhood as a nostalgic backdrop, showcasing the peaceful coexistence and religious harmony that existed in Lahore before the independence and Partition. Lenny's sheltered and secure upbringing mirrors the peace shattered by the violence of Partition. This contrast emphasizes the subsequent horrors of religious intolerance, with Sidhwa using Lenny's life as a microcosm to explore the broader civil war.

The novel also draws parallels between personal and societal relationships. Lenny's nursemaid, Ayah, attracts a diverse group of admirers, mirroring the complex ethnic composition of both India and Pakistan. The breakdown of society into violent ethnic and religious factions reflects the fracturing of previously harmonious relationships in Lenny's world. The novel delves into how people interact in society and focuses on different aspects of life, such as caste, religion, and ethnicity. It clearly explains how some people often feel left out when they are of a different caste or religion.

It sheds light on the subjugation of women through practices like child marriages and prostitution while also addressing themes of sexuality and the dangers of politically motivated violence. By presenting the narrative through a child's voice and perspective, Sidhwa approaches India and Pakistan's complex histories, social complexities, and political nuances with humor and compassion.

However, Lenny's childhood is marred by numerous horrors once Partition occurs. These horrors culminate with Lenny's devastating betrayal of her beloved Ayah by the Ice-candy man and his Muslim accomplices. She is very sorry for what she has done, and even her family is shocked about the things she has done.

In the final part of the story, the novel highlights the collective efforts of women in Lahore, transcending ethnic and religious boundaries, to mend the wounds inflicted during the Partition and its aftermath. Recognizing that painful truths are often shielded from children, her mother conceals her endeavors after Lenny's actions have eroded trust. She engages in dangerous and illicit black-market trading to earn money, which is used to rescue women trapped in enforced prostitution and sexual slavery.

Lenny remains unaware of her mother's clandestine activities until the novel's end, when her Godmother reveals her influential position by locating and liberating Ayah from the clutches of the Ice-candy-man. Ayah is eventually sent back to her family in Amritsar, India, through her mother's courageous work. This revelation serves as a beacon of hope for the future of Pakistan, as it demonstrates that these women unite in support of one another, transcending divisions of ethnicity and religion.

The women in Lahore band together, demonstrating resilience and compassion, working towards repairing the damage inflicted by the Partition. Their collective efforts signify a promising future, where unity and solidarity prevail over differences, offering hope for a more inclusive and harmonious society.

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
John Lubbock

Lisa Azarmi - Summer cosmos.

A good life happens when you stop and are grateful for the ordinary moments that so many of us just steamroll over to try to find those extraordinary moments.
~ Brené Brown

~ Art by Gillian Rule Art

I used to dislike being sensitive. I thought it made me weak. But take away that single trait, and you take away the very essence of who I am. You take away my conscience, my ability to empathize, my intuition, my creativity, my deep appreciation of the little things, my vivid inner life, my keen awareness of others' pain and my passion for it all.
~ Caitlin Japa

~ Art by Julia Arnt

Literature and Linguistics
The linguistic study of literature addresses the ways in which language is differently organized in verbal art (literature): form is added to language, altered, attenuated, and differently grouped. These different kinds of organization are normatively subject to limits, some derived from limits on general linguistic form or language-specific linguistic form. However, linguistic form can in principle be altered in any way at all, for example, in avant-garde texts or to produce artificial languages for literature; this possibility raises the general question of whether some organizations of literary language are cognitively transparent and others are cognitively opaque.

Of the various added forms, the most extensively studied has been metrical form, which requires the words of the text to be grouped into lines. Metrical form combines a non-linguistic counting system with a rhythmic system that adapts the rhythmic systems of ordinary phonology; most accounts of meter have focused on the rhythms as these are of greater linguistic interest than counting (which plays no significant role in language in general). The metrical line may have a special status, as a cognitively privileged level of grouping, possibly because it is fitted to working memory. Rhyme and alliteration are two common kinds of added form; most linguistic interest has been in what counts as “similarity of sound” between two words, whether at a surface or underlying level. Rhyming and alliterating words are distributed relative to the grouping into lines and other constituents. The other major kind of added form is parallelism, where two sections of text are structurally similar, usually in syntax and vocabulary. The various added forms may allow for variation (e.g., every line in an English sonnet can be in a different rhythmic variation of iambic pentameter), and can be intermittently present; there is no clear equivalent to ‘grammaticality’ in literary linguistic form. This may be because literary linguistic form holds as a presumption about a text, derived by inference, rather than as a constitutive structural device.

All literary texts have a discourse structure, which includes division into various types of group or constituent, including the division of a narrative into episodes, exploiting verbal cues of episodic boundaries. Narratives also require the tracking of referents such as people and objects across the discourse, which draws on the study of pronominals. Literary texts may also have a distinctive vocabulary, borrowing or inventing words to an unusual degree, and engaging in various kinds of wordplay.

Literary texts have ‘style’ and ‘markedness’, ways in which the language varies in noticeable ways but without coding a different linguistic semantics. These stylistic variations are sometimes treated as having determinate interpretations, but there are also approaches to stylistic variations in literature that treat them as having a non-determinate relation to meaning. Literature cannot have a different semantics or pragmatics from ordinary language, but meaning can be ‘difficult’ in literature in ways not characteristic of much ordinary language (but in common with ritual speech and other ways of speaking).

A major mode of linguistic investigation involves corpora, over which statistical analyses are undertaken. This has a relation to the question of whether our literary-linguistic knowledge has a probabilistic basis, a question that ties the study of language to questions of expectation in aesthetics (e.g., music) more generally. Literature exists in various modalities—writing, oral literature, and signed literature—and linguistic approaches to literature have been sensitive to this, as well as to the special questions about how texts are set to music in songs.

Poet: Faiz Ullah
Iqbal Block: A Beacon of Learning (2024)

In this serene abode of learning's grace,
Where Iqbal's spirit doth forever dwell,
Students of English find a sacred space,
Where words ignite and stories swell.

Beneath the watchful gaze of ancient trees,
A haven of knowledge, where minds engage,
With every page, a universe to seize,
And every verse, a heart's pilgrimage.

Iqbal Block, a beacon, shining bright,
A testament to passion, hope, and dream,
Where scholars strive to reach for greater height,
And knowledge flows like a gentle stream.

So let us cherish this hallowed ground,
Where learning's seeds forever will be found.

According to Van Dijk (2004) “Critical Discourse analysis is a type of discourse analysis research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in social and political contexts”.

Grice's MAXIMS

(WAITING FOR GODOT)
According to both theatre critics and literary scholars, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is essentially a play in which nothing happens not once, but twice. This often-used phrase describes the way in which the characters find themselves stuck in an endless cycle of waiting throughout the play, unable to make any forward progress toward their goal by the end of either act. The idea that Waiting for Godot’s plot is circular rather than linear plays a key role in illustrating the bleak themes that Beckett explores throughout and emphasizes its identity as Theatre of the Absurd. This artistic movement, which emerged in Europe in the 1950s as a response to the aftermath of World War II, features nonsensical scenarios and irrational characters. Many playwrights of the era looked to this nontraditional form of performance in order to create art reflective of the hopelessness that many felt at the time, and Beckett’s choice to put characters on stage who virtually do nothing allows him to comment on the meaninglessness of human existence. Estragon and Vladimir want so desperately to have a sense of purpose in their lives that they fully commit to waiting for Godot, whom they believe will save them, to arrive. This innate need for purpose serves as the play’s central conflict, although Beckett emphasizes throughout that their goal is impossible to achieve.

Although the plot of the play as a whole is repetitive and circular, each act has an arc that reflects the pointlessness of Estragon and Vladimir’s waiting. Act One works to set up the absurd nature of the characters’ universe and challenge the audience’s understanding of what makes an idea or action important. The inciting incident occurs at the very top of the play when Vladimir enters to find Estragon helplessly pulling at his boot. This moment, which involves a recognition of the fact that they have met like this many times prior, marks the beginning of their mission to wait for Godot to arrive. Beyond the strangeness of the dialogue’s content and delivery, the minimalism of the set design and the futility of Estragon’s physical struggle create the sense that the characters exist in a rather empty world that defies explanation. Establishing these absurd qualities right away allows Beckett to call attention to the illogical reasoning behind Estragon and Vladimir’s inability to leave, especially since they have no clear concept of who Godot is or what he can do for them.

The rising action of the play continues as Estragon and Vladimir attempt to find ways to entertain themselves as they wait, one of the most notable being their interactions with Pozzo and his slave, Lucky. Estragon initially thinks that Pozzo is Godot, a point of view which reinforces the ambiguity of Godot’s identity, and Vladimir struggles to express why they must wait for Godot. Through these details, the meaninglessness of their behavior emerges as nothing they do absolves their suffering or gets them closer to Godot. After Pozzo and Lucky exit, a boy enters on behalf of Mr. Godot and tells Estragon and Vladimir that his master will come to meet them the following day, and this moment serves as the climax of Act One. Godot’s absence thwarts their attempt to find purpose, renders their day of waiting completely pointless, and reinforces the unsettling uncertainty of their world. With Vladimir’s resolve to continue waiting for Godot the following day in the falling action of Act One, the characters find themselves back to exactly where they started.

Act Two essentially repeats the arc of Act One in order to emphasize the extent to which Estragon and Vladimir are trapped in an endless cycle, although this act features even more unexplainable events and sudden epiphanies which elaborate on Beckett’s primary arguments. Much like Act One, the inciting incident of Act Two occurs when Vladimir enters singing a repetitive song with Estragon following closely behind. Estragon does not remember anything from the previous day, and although Vladimir attempts to jog his memory, his forgetfulness suggests that nothing about their experience was noteworthy. The rising action continues as they discuss a myriad of random topics, a choice which calls attention to the ineffectiveness of language to authentically communicate, and struggle to come to terms with unexplainable changes such as the new leaves on the tree and Pozzo’s blindness. These differences from Act One suggest that humankind can never truly understand the world around them due to the influence of chance, or randomness.

As Act Two goes on, however, Vladimir does get closer to grasping the reality of their hopeless situation. When Godot’s boy returns in the climax to deliver the news that his master will come the following day, Vladimir lunges at him in frustration as he realizes that Godot may never come. The bleak tone of the falling action, which features Estragon and Vladimir committing to wait the following day, finalizes Beckett’s ultimate argument that human experience is meaningless and suffering is inescapable.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLASSICISM AND ROMANTICISM

Spoonerism
In subject area: Arts and Humanities

A spoonerism is a linguistic phenomenon where the initial sounds of words are switched, often resulting in comical or nonsensical phrases. It is named after Reverend William Spooner, who unintentionally produced these slips of the tongue, such as saying "sew you to another sheet" instead of "show you to another seat."