LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS ❖ Phonologically, the analysis of language at this
THE PHONO-GRAPHOLOGICAL LEVEL
Phonology - deals with the phonic substance (segmental
and suprasegmental units of language)
Graphology - deals with the graphic substance.
Phono-Graphology
- popularised by Halliday (1961) in explicating a
number of different levels at which linguistic
events should be accounted for.
- primary levels are ‘form’, ‘substance’ and
‘context’.
Substance - material of language
Phonic - audible noises
Graphic’ - visible marks
Phono-graphology - organisation of substance into
meaningful events.
● language operates to yield extra-textual features.
Therefore, Systemic Functional Linguistics
recognises the formal and the situational
dimensions of language description.
Leech and Short (1981) identify 4 levels of language
description: syntax, semantics, phonology and
graphology.
❖ Syntax and phonology form the expression plane
and interact to bring out meaning which is the
pre-occupation of semantics,
❖ graphology is an alternative form of realization to
phonology.
❖ Although phonological features can be said to be
remote in a written text, they are still not
irrelevant.
❖ a text is written to be read or spoken. Spellings
can be exploited to suggest some phonological
features and these will be more prominent when
the text is read aloud.
Graphology
level involves the basic sound units such as the - this level, such things as spelling, punctuation, space
combination of sounds, stress, tone and patterns
of intonation.
❖ consider the possible syllable structure of a
particular language and the various ways in
which syllables can be combined. This aspect can
also be helpful in a contrastive study of
languages. For example, while two or more
consonants can occur in a sequence in English,
it is not so in Yoruba.
❖ The segmental units of English consist of:
- 20 vowels
- 24 consonants
The 20 vowels are made up of twelve pure vowels and
eight diphthongs.
The 24 consonants are made up of fifteen voiced and
nine voiceless consonants.
❖ The Suprasegmentals
- are the units that are larger than the segmentals.
- Example: Stress - refers to the degree of force or
loudness with which a syllable is pronounced.
- It can also indicate a word class as in present
(noun), present (verb); object (noun), object(verb).
- Intonation which is another suprasegmental unit
indicates primarily, the falling or rising pitch of a
word or sentence as in:
He has come (falling intonation)
He has come? (rising intonation)
The falling intonation in (a) above indicates a statement,
while the rising intonation in (b) indicates a question.
The combination of stress and intonation gives the
English language its peculiar rhythm, and writers,
especially poets, utilize heavily this feature of the
language to achieve some effects in their writings.
management, underlining, use of pictures, colouring,
etc. are considered and analysed.
- pattern of writing can also indicate the variety of
language involved.
- Ex: words like ‘color’ and ‘meter’ are classified as
American English, based on their spellings.
Conversely, their varieties (‘colour’ and ‘metre’) are
regarded as British English for the same reason.
- Graphological elements are often used to achieve
foregrounding in a text.
- Foregrounding - making certain elements in a text
prominent so as to attract attention. Any aspect of a
text that is foregrounded is made conspicuous to
attract the reader’s attention.
Both phonic and graphic elements of language form
what systemic Functional Grammar calls the substance
of language.
Phono-graphological analysis can be said to involve the
analysis of the deployment of phonological units of
segmentals and suprasegmentals at one level and those
of the graphic substance of language – i.e. features
relating to the writing system. A phono-graphological
analysis will be pertinent in the analysis of poetry, in
particular. But both aspects are necessarily involved in a
stylistic analysis of a text – be it spoken or written. This
will be apparent when you consider a written text that is
meant to be spoken. Such an analysis is no less
significant in other genres if we are to account for their
total significance.

THE LEXICO-SEMANTIC LEVEL
The level at which a stylistic analyst looks at the author’s
deployment of words and their meanings in a text.
According to Milmkiaer (2002: 339), the study of lexis is
the study of the vocabulary of a language in all its
aspects.
❖ Semantics - the study of the linguistic meaning
of morphemes, words, phrases and sentences.
Subfields of semantics are lexical semantics and
structural semantics.
Lexical semantics - concerned with the meaning of
words and the meaning of syntactic units larger than the
word. Roman Jacobson is quoted by Fromkin et al
(2003) as saying: that language without meaning is
meaningless.
Semantics - derivatives of the Greek verb “semano” (“to
mean” or “to signify”).
In the disciplines of philosophy and linguistics, semantics
is the study of the relationship between the signs of a
language and their meanings.
- both disciplines propose to explain how persons
derive meanings from linguistic expressions.
Lexis describes the entire storage of words and
expressions in a language.
‘lexicon’ - derives from the root word ‘lexis’ and it
refers to the list of the possible words in a language.
Linguists today study three levels of language:
1. phonetic (relating to sounds)
2. syntactic (relating to the way in which words
combine grammatically to make sentences)
3. semantic.
theorists take into account the psychological questions of
how people attain concepts and how these relate to word
meanings. Semantics helps us to understand the nature
of language because it accounts for the abnormalities
experienced when reading English sentences such as:
“The chicken ate the man” “My cat read English” and “A
dress was walking to the door”. The abnormality in each
of the sentences above is not noticed in its syntax
because it adheres to the same basic syntactic rule such
as:
Hence, each of the sentence is grammatical.
Fromkin (et al) (2003) assert that one of the important
ways of representing semantic properties is by use of
semantic features. These are formal and notational
devices that indicate the presence or absence of
semantic properties by pluses (+) and minuses (-).
Words fulfill certain roles within the situation described
by the sentence. These have been identified as Agents
(subject), theme (object) and instrument (predicator).
Further functions of noun phrases in a sentence include:
experience, location, source, and goal, among others.
Look at the following:
❖ Lexico-Semantics
The main argument of the lexical semanticists is that if
the word is an identifiable unit of language, then, it
must be possible to isolate a core stable meaning that
enables its consistent use by a vast number of users in
different situations.
The task involved is what is known as componential
analysis which is a by-product of lexical composition, i.e.
the process of analyzing lexical features.
Pioneered by Katz and Fodor (1963), lexical semantics
believes that words are decomposable into primitive
meanings which can be represented by markers such as
plus (+) and minus (-) matrices. For instance, ‘spinster’
may have the following componential features: +HUMAN,
+FEMALE, + MATURITY, +SINGLE (- married). Thus,
words can be broken down into their distinctive semantic
features in order to describe what they mean. Somebody
doing a stylistic analysis at the lexico-semantic level can
use the lexical features of a text to describe how words
are used to mean in the text.
❖ Lexical Relations
Germane to the study of lexis is the semantic field
theory which holds that the meanings represented in the
lexicon are interrelated because they cluster together to
form fields of meaning which in turn metamorphose to
a larger field of entailment. This cycle continues until
the total language is encompassed. The issue of lexical
relations is closely related to the notion of semantic field.
Lyons (1977) and Leech (1981) view basic or primitive
semantic relations as synonymy, antonymy and
hyponymy.
Synonym - similarity of meanings. This is the relationship
between “go” and “proceed.”
Antonymy- suggests oppositeness. It also denotes
converseness for the reversible relationships between
“husband” and “wife”, “male” and “female.”
This is what Leech (1981: 102) calls relative opposition.
Hyponymy - relation of inclusion. For instance, the word
“flower” will have the following co-hyponyms: rose,
hibiscus, pride of Barbados. Similarly, the word “vehicle”
has the following relations: van, bus, car, lorry and its
co-hyponyms.
Types of Words
Denotative and Connotative Meanings
Denotative meaning refers to the conceptual meaning of
a word. It is the plain or central meaning of a word. It is
this type of meaning that is easily expressed in terms of
componential features.
For example, the denotative meaning of “man” can be
expressed in terms of +HUMAN, + ADULT – FEMALE.
Denotative meaning of a word is said to be its literal,
objective meaning.
Connotative meaning is a kind of additional, suggestive,
personal or cultural meaning. If we regard denotation as
an objective meaning of a word, connotation can be
regarded as a subjective meaning. Connotatively, a
woman can be regarded as a man, to suggest that she
has the attributes of a man. Connotation points to the
associative or figurative dimension of word meanings.
Idiomatic Meaning
Idioms are special collocations the meaning of which
cannot be determined from the meanings of the
elements that make them up. The meaning of an idiom
has to be learnt as that of an individual lexical item.
Examples of idioms are:
- to rain cats and dogs
- to hold the bull by the horn
- to let a sleeping dog lie.
Note that apart from their literal contexts, words can also
have idiomatic contexts, and language users often exploit
these when they communicate. As you have leant, words
have a way of combining with one another in a text. The
patterns of combination may be fixed or free. When it is
fixed, we have an idiomatic expression.
The issue of meaning is a serious problem in linguistics;
it has various dimensions. But as elusive as it is, we still
have to consider it in any linguistic analysis because
meaning is the core of any form of communication that
relies on language. One level at which meaning is
considered is the word level. This is significant because
words make up a text; they constitute the basic unit of a
text.
SUMMARY
A lexico-semantic analysis calls for the explication of
word meanings in any text. Specifically, issues relating to
lexical relations, dimensions of meaning (denotative,
connotative, literal, figurative, idiomatic, etc) should be
focused on. Again, at this level, you should note how a
writer or speaker uses different types of words like
abstract, concrete, simple, difficult, specific, general, and
so on, to create meanings in a text. If we understand
the nature of words and their patterns of combination in
a text, we will be able to do a meaningful lexico-semantic
analysis of the text.
Figures of Speech
A deviation from the ordinary use of words in order to
increase their effectiveness. Basically, it is a figurative
language that may consist of a single word or phrase. It
may be a simile, a metaphor or personification to convey
the meaning other than the literal meaning.
1. Simile - two unlike things are explicitly compared.
- “She is like a fairy”.
- a simile is introduced by words such as like, so,
as etc.
2. Metaphor - an informal or implied simile in which
words like, as, so are omitted.
- “He is like a lion (Simile) “
- “He is a lion (metaphor)”.
- Metaphors are underlined.
● She is a star of our family.
● The childhood of the world; the anger of the
tempest; the deceitfulness of the riches: wine
is a mocker.
● She is now in the sunset of her days.
3. Personification - attribution of personal nature,
intelligence or character to inanimate objects or abstract
notions.
- For example, in some phrases we use, the furious
storm, the thirsty ground, and the pitiless cold.
Some other examples are:
■ Little sorrows sit and weep. (Boccaccio)
■ The dish ran away with the spoon. (Blake)
4. Metonymy - meant for a change of name. It is a
substitute of the thing names for the thing meant.
Following examples will clarify the concept.
■ The pen is mightier than the sword.
■ From the cradle to the grave. = from
childhood to death.
■ I have never read Milton. = the works of
Milton.
5. Apostrophe - a direct address to some inanimate
thing or some abstract idea as if it were living person or
some absent person as if it were present.
- “Boy’s mother loved him very much.”
6. Hyperbole - a statement made emphatic by
overstatement.
- “Virtues as the sands of the shore.”
7. Synecdoche - is the understanding of one thing by
means of another. Here, a part is used to designate the
whole or the whole to designate a part.
- “I have the Viceroy, love the man.”, and “All
hands (crew) at work.”
-
8. Transferred Epithets - the qualifying objective is
transferred from a person to a thing as in phrases.
- “sleepless night”, “sunburn mirth”, and “melodious
plain”.
9. Euphemism - using the euphemism, we speak in
agreeable and favorable terms of some person, object or
event which is ordinarily considered unpleasant and
disagreeable.
■ He is telling us a fairy tale. (a lie)
■ He has fallen asleep. (he is dead)
10. Irony or Sarcasm - the real meanings of the words
used are different from the intended meanings.
- the child of cobbler has no shoe.
11. Pun - consists of a play on the various meanings of a
word. Its effect is often ludicrous,
■ Is life worth living? It depends upon the
liver.
■ Obviously, the constitution is against
prostitution and congress is against
progress. (con means against and pro
means for)
12. Epigram - a brief pointed saying. It couples words
which apparently contradict each other. The language of
the epigram is remarkable for its brevity.
■ The child is the father of the man.
(Wordsworth)
■ Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
■ The art lies in concealing art.
■ Silence is sometimes more eloquent than
words.
■ Conspicuous by its absence.
13. Antithesis - a striking opposition or contrast of
words is made in the same sentence in order to secure
emphasis.
■ To err is human, to forgive divine.
■ Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
14. Oxymoron - combines two seemingly contradictory or ■ By apt Alliteration’s artful a
incongruous words for sharp emphasis or effect. ■ Glittering through the gloomy g
■ “darkness visible” (Milton); ■ The furrow follows f
■ “make haste slowly” (Suetonius) 21. Onomatopoeia - formation of a word whose sound is
■ “loving hate” (Romeo and Juliet) made to suggest or echo the sense as in cuckoo, bang,
15. Litotes - opposite of hyperbole. Here an affirmative is growl, hiss.
conveyed by negation of the opposite. ■ The moan of doves in immemorial elms and
■ He is no dullard. murmur of innumerable bees.
■ I am not a little ■ Rend with the tremendous sound your ears
■ He is not a bad sort. asunder with guns, drum, trumpet,
16. Interrogation - a rhetorical mode of affirming or blunderbuss, and thunder.
denying something more strongly than could be done in 22. Circumlocution - consists of expressing some fact or
ordinary language. Examples, idea in a roundabout way, instead of stating it at once.
■ Who is here so base that would be a ■ The viewless couriers of the air. =(the wind)
bondman? ■ That statement of his was purely an effort of
■ Who is here so rude that would not be a imagination. = (a fiction)
Roman? 23. Tautology or Pleonasm
■ Who is here so vile that will not love his ● Tautology is meant for repeating the same fact
country? (Shakespeare) or idea in different words.
17. Exclamation - used for strong expression of feelings. ● For example, “It is the privilege and birthright of
For examples, O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud I fall every man to express his ideas without any fear.”
upon the thorns of life; I bleed!
18. Climax - an arrangement of a series of ideas in the
order of increasing importance.
● “What a piece of work man! How noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties! In action, how
like an angel!”
19. Anticlimax or Bathos - opposite to climax and
signifies a ludicrous descent from the higher to the lower.
■ A man so various, that he seemed to be. Not
one, but all mankind’s epitome; who in the
course of one revolving moon; was lawyer,
statesman, fiddler, and buffoon.
20.Alliteration - repetition of the same letter or syllable
at the beginning of two or more words is called
alliteration.