Free English Language Dissertations - This Is What The Following Analysis Will Attempt. Analysis Aidan Chambers’
This is what the following analysis will attempt.
Analysis
Aidan Chambers’ The Reader in the Book presents arguments which make clear the need for linguistic analysis of children’s literature, and is therefore supremely useful to this analysis. Chambers argues that, firstly, in order to properly critique children’s literature, one must take into account the child as the supposed reader of the text; that children, as inexperienced readers, do not know how to accommodate a text, and so any piece written for them must effectively draw them in and accommodate itself to their needs and expectations; that the style of a piece is the manner in which an author uses language to accomplish this. Chambers argues that for a text to be successful with a child, the style must be specifically suited to children. This in turn leads one to the importance of a linguistic approach to the text: in order to fully understand the usage of language.
This section of analysis will look at the first two pages of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, first published in Great Britain in 1943, and Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, first published in Great Britain in 1970. Ohmann talks primarily of three rules that make transformational grammar useful in analysis of style. The first rule Ohmann discusses is that in most cases, the transformation of a sentence is optional. This means that the writing of a sentence in a particular way is not required but a matter of stylistic choice. Secondly, Ohmann states that by transforming a sentence, the meaning remains intact because the composite segments of the sentence remain intact, and thirdly, he describes how this can help the analyst understand the relationship between the complex and simple sentences used. Compare, first, the opening few sentences of each:
Once upon a time there were three children, Joe, Beth and Frannie. They lived with their mother and father in a little cottage deep in the country.
And:
Down in the valley there were three farms. The owners of these farms had done well.
Although the works are separated by nearly thirty years, there is surprising grammatical and syntactical similarity between the two extracts. Both begin with the basic structural pattern of NOUN PHRASE plus VERB PHRASE, and avoid complex sentences. In both cases, these openings could be transformed from a collection of two simple sentences to a longer complex sentence, neither could be simplified further without detracting from the meaning conveyed. Thus, the use of the simple sentence has been a deliberate stylistic choice for both writers. The sentences are short and simple and to the point.
