Feature 5

Feature 4

Feature 3

The passage abounds in 'trailing constituents' in which grammatical build-up takes place towards the right of the main Predicator position. These clauses contain numerous subordinate clauses and Adjuncts of location, so again, and sustaining feature 2, the narrative is rich in detail about place but low in detail about time. The amount of information contained in these trailing constituents also brings into sharper relief the very sparseness of the material that is positioned to the left of the Predicator slot. Furthermore, the grammatical 'sprawl' that is bought about by these trailing constituents also facilitates an interesting textual ambiguity. In the sequences '... it flows...' and '... it rolls defiled...' (2), the pronoun 'it' serves a possible dual reference with respect to its two potential antecedents in the main clause. Is it the fog that flows and rolls, or is it the river? My own interpretation is that the ambi­guity is motivated, and that it works to underscore the very blurring and indeterminacy that is ascribed to the core visual elements in the scene.

There is a gradual narrowing of spatial focus as the passage progresses. Whereas the first Adjunct declares that the fog is, well, everywhere, subsequent Adjunct elements move progressively right down into the localised, even microscopic, environment of the stem and bowl of the skipper's pipe. In tandem with this progressive narrowing through Adjuncts, the processes embodied by the related verbs in the main clauses also undergo an interesting change. In experiential terms the processes asso­ciated with ' fog ' are initially intransitive in that they do not impact upon a Goal. Here are four such examples, piled up in parallel in the fourth sentence: '... creeping into the cabooses... lying out on the yards... hovering in the rigging... drooping on the gun­wales...'. However, just as the overall spatial focus narrows, so the transitivity pattern shifts to a Goal-directed one, as in 'fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers...' (5). It is notable that the adverb ' cruelly ' is the only instance where a grammatical element (here an Adjunct) is wedged between the ' Fog' and its following Predicator. It seems that the longer the passage goes on, the more menacing and spiteful the fog becomes.

The final sentence of the passage offers a good illustration of internal foregrounding. The pattern established from sentence I through to 5 gradually forms its own text-internal norm, so to keep us on our interpretative toes, as it were, Dickens subverts the pattern in the sixth sentence. This he does by creating a different Subject element and by shifting the lexical item 'fog' to the right of the Predicator. That said, 'fog' still receives no grammatical modification and therefore still maintains its unde­fined, indefinite feel. By showing how a pattern initially built through parallelism and repetition can ultimately be turned on its head, this fifth stylistic feature illustrates well the fluid and dynamic properties of foregrounding.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11