Syntax, Selection and Perspective
IntroducedTone shapes the reader's interpretation
- The narrator's or speaker's tone toward events or characters influences readers' interpretation of the ideas associated with those things.
- So tone does not stop at the character it describes — it reaches the ideas attached to them.
- A contemptuous tone toward a character makes the reader sceptical of what that character stands for.
A narrator may call a disastrous picnic “pleasant”; readers are free to inspect the soggy sandwiches.
A narrator's tone influences the reader's interpretation of...
Tone reaches past the character to what that character stands for.
Syntax carries tone
- The syntactical arrangement of phrases and clauses in a sentence can emphasize details or ideas and convey a narrator's or speaker's tone.
- Where a phrase sits changes what it weighs: last position is emphatic, subordinate position is discounted.
- So an unusual arrangement is evidence, and it can be quoted.
Only the information a text includes can be used as evidence.
The CED writes included and/or not included — omission counts on its own.
What is left out is evidence
- Information included and/or not included in a text conveys the perspective of characters, narrators and/or speakers.
- The CED writes and/or deliberately: omission counts on its own.
- So the obvious question a narration never asks is analysable, and often the sharpest evidence available.
Which signal is this?
Sort each observation by the CED's category.
Perspective may influence the details and the ____ of detail in a text.
Four pages on a room and one line on a death is a perspective stated in proportions.
Omission is evidence in its own right. The CED writes information included and/or not included, so the question a narration never asks — the person it never describes, the year it skips — is analysable material, not an absence of material.
Select all the things the amount of detail may reveal.
The CED names exactly those three.
The amount of detail is a signal too
- A narrator's or speaker's perspective may influence the details and amount of detail in a text and may reveal biases, motivations or understandings.
- Not only which details — how many.
- Four pages on a room and one line on a death is a perspective, stated in proportions.
Put the selection pass in order.
Proportions are usually stronger evidence than any single sentence.
A selection pass
- Find one sentence with an unusual arrangement and say what its last position emphasises.
- List what the narration covers in detail and what it passes over.
- Then name the bias, motivation or understanding those proportions reveal.
The narrator gives four pages to the funeral arrangements and one clause to the death itself: "after she died." Nothing is hidden and nothing is false. The proportions reveal a narrator who can manage a process and cannot approach an event — and the whole novel is about that difference.
Tone influences readers' interpretation of the ideas associated with events and characters. Syntactical arrangement emphasises details and conveys tone. Information included and/or not included conveys perspective, and the amount of detail may reveal biases, motivations or understandings.