C) Graphon

Graphical fixation of phonetic peculiarities of pronunciation with the violation of the spelling is called a graphon. It is characteristic of prose only and is used to indicate blurred, incoherent or careless pronunciation, caused by temporary (tender age, intoxication, ignorance, etc.) or by permanent factors (social, territorial, educational status). That is why we differentiate permanent or occasional graphons.

VA. Kukharenko defines graphon as intentional violation of the spelling of a word (or word combination) used to reflect its authentic pronunciation.

Graphons are style forming, since they show deviations from the neutral (usual) way of pronouncing speech sounds and/or their combi­nations, as well as peculiar prosodic features of speech.

To begin with, purely individual mispronunciation of certain sounds is observed in the graphon th which stands for the letter s, thus showing the speech of those who have a lisp:

"Thquire!... Your thervant! Thith ith a bad pieth of bithnith, thith ith..." (i.e. "Squire!... Your servant! This is a bad piece of business, this is...").

Most spelling alterations, however, i.e. most graphons show:

Features of territorial or social dialect of the speaker (and, ultimately, his social standing).

In many cases, they show deviations from Standard English typical of whole groups of English speakers.

Highly typical in this respect is the reproduction, by many British writers, of cockney, the vernacular of the lower classes of the London population. One cockney feature is the famous 'dropping of H-s' (an inexact denomination, since 'h-s' are dropped only in graphons: what is omitted in speech is not the letter A, but the sound [h]: 'ave (= have), 'at (= hat), 'is (= his), 'ope (= hope) and the like.

Here is a funny story of a cockney family trying to use correct English in their American visitor's presence:

"Father," said one of the children at breakfast, "I want some more 'am, please." - "You mustn't say 'am, my child,. the correct form of the word is 'am", retorted his father, passing the plate with sliced ham on it. "But I did say 'am", pleaded the boy. "No, you didn't: you said 'am instead of 'am". The mother turned to the guest, smiling: "Oh, don't mind them, sir, pray. They are both saying 'am and both think it is 'am they are saying".

Another well-known peculiarity of cockney English is the substitu­tion of the diphthong [ai] for the diphthong [ei]. The corresponding graphon is usually у in all positions where a, or at, or ay should be.

This is how John Galsworthy reproduces the speech of one of the characters of The White Monkey-(Tony Bicket):

"Is that my wife?... I see it is, from your fyce... I want the truth -I must 'ave it!... If that's 'er fyce there, then that's 'er body in the gallery - Aubrey Greene; it's the same nyme. What's it all mean?" His face had become almost formidable; his cockney accent very broad. "What gyme 'as she been plyin'? You gotta tell me before I go aht of here" (aht stands for out).

Characteristically, the change of the diphthong [ei] into [ai] occurs not only in the speech of uneducated Londoners: a very prominent statesman from Australia, interviewed at the Soviet TV, repeatedly said sy (= say) and Austrylia (= Australia).

As for American English, we shall have two quotations from what Mark Twain asserts is the Missouri Negro dialect (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

"Ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas' it's a sign dat you's a-gwine to be rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead."

"You know dat one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto Bradish? Well he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' dollars mo' at en'er de year... I was de on'y one dat had much..."

The tendency of turning the voiced thinto d is not restricted to the speech of the coloured population in the USA. One of the "bell­boys', Hegglund by name (An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser), thus instructs Clyde Griffiths (the hero of the novel) how to behave, what to do, and where to get writing paper and pens if hotel guests want them:

"Off'n de key desk, I toldja. He's to de left over dere. He'll give 'em to ya. An' you gits ice-water in de hall we lined up in just a minute ago - at dat end over dere, see - you'll see a little door. You gotta give dat guy in dere a dime oncet in a while or he'll get sore".

It is not dialect features only, territorial and social, which are of importance for stylistics, but also variants of pronunciation (different representations of the same phoneme). The more prominent, the more foregrounding parts of utterances impart expressive force to what is said. A speaker may strengthen, emphasize, make more prominent the word when he, for instance, intensifies its initial consonant, which is shown in the graphon as doubling the letter: "N-no!" sounds more de­cisive, more emphatic than a mere "No!".

Another way of intensifying a word or a phrase, making it more expressive, is scanning, i.e. uttering each syllable or, generally, part of a word as a phonetically independent unit, in retarded tempo. The graphic means of showing this graphon is hyphenated spelling: "Im-pos-sible!".

Поиск по сайту: