Feminist Models of Text
MODELS OF LANGUAGE AND TEXT:
IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT
In stylistic analysis in general, the model of text and
language which is used is rarely made explicit. That is,
the text itself is assumed to exist in some self-evident
state whereby it contains meanings which the critic
and reader discover or uncover; the critic does not
need to explain this to the reader, because it is taken as
commonsense knowledge about texts in general which
both the reader and the critic share. As I argued in the
Introduction, many of the stylistic analyses which
have been undertaken have used a text-immanent
model of meaning; that is, they have assumed that
what the critic ‘finds’ in the text is located in the text
itself, rather than perhaps being more the result of a
negotiation between the reader and the text.
There are various models of language; for example,
language can be seen as a form of information
transfer—the most commonsense and simplistic view;
language can be viewed as a form of social networking
or social bonding, or as the site where power relations
are negotiated and enforced; language can also be seen
as a set of mutually exclusive choices in a closed
system.
The type of analysis undertaken is assumed to be
objective, little attention is paid to questions such as
gender, race and class, which, stylisticians assume,
would necessarily bias the analysis. Stylistic analysis
is thus posed as outside such questions, constituting a
‘neutral’ form of reading.
The purpose of the analysis is rarely made clear and
the function of the critic and the analysis produced by
the critic are rarely discussed.
There is an underlying assumption that readers are
supposed to learn the techniques and skills described
in order to be able to come to perform ‘better’ readings
than they currently do. This lack of explicitness about
the assumptions an analysis is based upon, is a serious
failing in much traditional stylistic work.
It explores two models of text, one the traditional
stylistic model and the other a feminist model of text,
to show what differences the choice of model makes
on analysis. These are not the only models of text
available to stylisticians or feminists, but they
exemplify limit-cases of the models drawn upon, and
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may be seen to represent tendencies in various types
of analysis.
CONTRASTING MODELS: A TRADITIONAL
MODEL OF TEXT
The first model to be described is a traditional stylistic
one, which is based on a model of language and
communication used in linguistics. This has been
termed the code model of understanding (Crystal
1988). Here, language is seen as largely about
transaction, the exchange of information between two
people. One of the participants, the speaker, has a
thought which s/he encodes into words; this message
is then transmitted through speech, which the other
participant hears and decodes. As Sperber and Wilson
point out: ‘the view of linguistic communication as
achieved by encoding thoughts in sounds is so
entrenched.
The assumptions underlying this model, since this
model implicitly forms the theoretical basis for many
theories of literary production.
 First, it is assumed that thought precedes the
production of words and speech, that thought
is somehow separate from language and exists
outside language.
 Second, it is assumed that the message which
is encoded in language is exactly the same as
the message which is decoded, that is, that
there are no impediments to communication
and there are no misunderstandings. This is an
idealized form of communication where words
have meaning in an unproblematic and simple
way. In the same way that we all assume a
shared knowledge for words such as ‘table’,
we are to assume that, within this model, when
we say words with more abstract meanings,
such as ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’, we can be
sure that we will be understood by the hearer
as we intended.
 Third, it is assumed that the normal mode of
language-use is between two participants,
 speaking face to face, one of whom is the
speaker and one of whom is the listener. It is
fairly obvious that in most conversations, these
roles are not so clearly allocated (except for
within very stratified power relations, we
normally shift from speaker role to hearer role
with great facility).
 Finally, it is assumed that the speaker has
perfect control over language and can choose
to express whatever s/he wishes; there are no
pressures or constraints which the language
exerts on what can be said. Language here is
seen simply as a transparent medium which is
used for the transmission of thoughts or
information.
There are several problems with this model as is
evident from these comments; first, although most
people do manage to make some sense of what is said
to them, perfect communication is rarely achieved.
Most speakers and readers tolerate a remarkable
amount of ‘fuzziness’ in both their production and
reception of speech and writing. Second, the listener
plays an active role in trying to make sense of what the
speaker is saying and makes hypotheses and
inferences as the conversation progresses, rather than
being a passive recipient of a message from the
speaker. Finally, it is clear that speakers produce
meanings within the confines of their linguistic
system; whilst each speaker has a measure of control
over what s/he says, the degree of flexibility and
‘freedom’ is limited. The linguistic system fixes the
parameters of the meanings available to the speaker
and hearer.
The author takes on the role of the speaker, and as such
is seen as a producer of ideas which are encoded in the
text. The role of the reader in this model is passive: she
is simply the receiver and decoder of the ideas
contained in the text. The text is taken as a given; it is
treated as if it existed in its own right and is analysed
with little reference to factors or constraints outside
it—the socioeconomic factors of gender and race, for
example. The text is also seen, yet again, as a
transparent medium which ‘carries’ the ideas of the
author. Language is recognized as having a material
identity only when it is considered by stylisticians to
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be the result of conscious choices on the part of the
author to ‘play’ or experiment with the medium itself.
Within this model of text, the author is in control of
the material s/he produces, that is, there are patterns
and effects within the text which the author decides
upon and which it is the job of the stylistician to detect.
The problems with the code model of
communication:
 First, the writer is clearly not in complete
control of her/ his material. In larger discourse
terms, as Michel Foucault has shown, there are
constraints on the way we use language and
organize information, which derive from large-
scale rules and regulations which are part of
the changing nature of discursive formations
and structures (Foucault 1972).
 A second problem with this model of literary
texts is associated with the role of the critic. A
linguistic model is simply taken by the
stylistician and ‘applied’ to the text as an aid to
interpretation. The analysis is notably small-
scale, focusing on words and possibly clauses;
rarely does analysis of language go beyond the
level of the sentence. As Martin Montgomery
states: ‘Stylistics has traditionally been
concerned pre-eminently with the differences
between or within texts, and those differences
have commonly been explored in terms of the
formal parameters of lexico-grammar’
(Montgomery 1988:2). It is only recently with
the advent of discourse stylistics that there
seems to be a move in the direction of the
analysis of context and the relations between
features within texts and extra textual factors.
Discourse stylistics is concerned with
descriptions of features within the text which
are not limited to relations between clauses.
 A third problem with the model is that there is
little reference to context, and even where
context—the extra textual—is referred to, it is
largely in terms of the processes of production
(that is, focused on the author). Stylistic
analysis has so far shown itself to be largely
uninterested in the world outside the text
except for the role of the author who plays a
determining role in the production and
 explanation of the linguistic devices which are
‘discovered’ in the text.
Feminist stylistics is a move away from text-immanent
criticism to a theorized concern with those factors
outside the text which may determine, or interact with,
elements in the text. Used in this sense, the term
‘context’ itself needs revision, since even though
gender can be seen as extratextual.
CONTRASTING MODELS: A FEMINIST
MODEL OF TEXT
The following model of the text avoids some of the
problems described and broadens our definition of
context. There are two facets to context within this
model: that of production and that of reception. On the
context of-production side of the model are listed
some of the many factors which go into the production
of a text, literary and non-literary. First, there are the
large-scale general language and discourse
constraints, mentioned earlier as limiting the range of
ideas which can be expressed within each
sociohistorical conjuncture, and also the form which
these ideas can take when expressed. Literary
conventions governing form, and also choice of
language and genre, clearly have considerable
influence over the type of text produced.
Another factor on the production side of the model is
that of affiliations: the conscious links which
individuals make to situate themselves as individuals;
for example, as Black, as straight, as a member of a
political party, and so on.
Publishers particularly in the 1990s can affect the way
that books are written, since they can often ask for
books to be reworked and they certainly play a major
role in the process of editing the text, either at the draft
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or the final manuscript stage. Publishers have clear
ideas about what they can market and are likely to try
to fit the works within their ‘list’ to this notion of what
can be sold.
Sociohistorical factors can also affect the production
of texts, since in times of repression, certain types of
writing are more likely to appear; for example, the
samizdat publications, or suppressed writings, in the
former Soviet Union.
On the reception side of the model, there is the
intended audience, the general community of readers
to whom the book will be marketed. In some ways this
needs to be also listed under the production side, since
it is a factor which is borne in mind by authors and
publishers alike.
The factors on the side of production should not be
seen in isolation from factors on the side of reception;
it is clear that there is a complex interchange between
the process of production and that of reception, and it
is equally clear that the literary text is not simply
influenced by these factors. It is a two-way process
whereby the text itself determines the type of
constraint on production which exerts an influence on
future texts.
 First, in the traditional ‘code’ model, it is not
possible to describe the processes of
discrimination which affect the way that a text
is produced .
 Second, in the traditional model, the author is
seen to be responsible for what is in the text.
 Third, the reader is seen in the traditional
model as isolated and as producing an
individual response to the text
 Fourth, for the feminist reader it is important
to see the text not as a container of meanings
but as a site for negotiation; the language
which is used is not in that sense fixed, but
rather is a series of potentially ambiguous
traces which are left and which the reader then
has to interrogate.
As feminist readers, therefore, we need two kinds of
information to construct the possible readings of a text
which might be arrived at.
 First, we need to make a close textual analysis
of the text, identifying certain features of
form—literary conventions, syntax, lexis,
genre and so on: the cues to interpretation.
  Second, we need to make some generalized of developing new ways of analysing texts, it is to be
predictions about groups of readers’ hoped that an awareness of the model of text which is
background knowledge—of language, of used in analysis will aid stylisticians to ask themselves
literary conventions—and of their models of questions about their own practice and to develop
the world. more theoretically challenging analyses of texts,
The advantage of this model is that textual production particularly in relation to gender.
and reception are considered not simply as the context
of production, which is the way in which texts are
conventionally analysed. Rather the reception of the
text is part of context. A second advantage is that the
reader’s role is given more prominence: it is clear that
the reader is addressed by the text, and that s/he is
affected by and can influence the interpretation of the
text. S/he is an active participant, negotiating with the
meanings which are being foisted on to her/him, and
resisting or questioning some of those meanings. This
is in direct contrast to the passive recipient of the text.

The theorist would also examine the ways that the text
attempts to force the reader to collude in the
production of this knowledge as self-evidently natural,
as in the use of questions which the reader is supposed
to be asking/being asked.
The feminist stylistician, drawing on this model of
text, would also look outside the text itself to the
context in which this text is consumed.
For the feminist theorist, this text need not be forced
to make sense, in the way that most stylistic analysis
assumes that analyses of texts, just like texts
themselves, need to be coherent—in fact, it is its
incoherence as text which is most interesting. Humour
in this newspaper is often a result of extended
metaphors which are not logical under sustained
analysis.
If analysed in detail, the meanings of particular items
become less self-evident. The text’s primary purpose
is entertainment of male readers, rather than
information-transfer, and its referential meaning is
ambiguous or obscure.
Thus, it is clear from the analysis of this text that the
choice of a model of language and textuality is not
simply a question which is of theoretical interest, but
is also important in terms of the type and scale of the
analysis which is made. The type of analysis which
feminist models of text allow is of greater complexity
and explanatory power than those conventionally used
in stylistics. Whilst stylistics is clearly in the process
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