DEVIATION

linguistic deviation, by which a writer creates an original language deviated from the norms of the
literary convention or everyday speech. Deviation therefore is a term used to describe the spelling
and pronunciation of a word (phonology) or a sentence structure (grammatical), which do not
conform to a norm. It is a linguistic phenomenon, which has an important psychological effect on
the readers or hearers. Therefore, if a portion of a poem or any other literary work is unusual, it
becomes especially noticeable or perceptually prominent. This is called ‘foregrounding.’ Leech
(2008), in A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry, also explains linguistic deviation through the
concept of foregrounding. Literary workers should concentrate on the element of interest and
surprise rather than on the automatic or normal/standard pattern.
These are different kinds of deviations,
1. Phonological
2. Graphological
3. Morphological
4. Lexical
5. Grammatical
6. Semantic
7. Syntactic
for the purpose of this unit, we will focus on the bolded and underlined deviations only

All the above deviations foreground a text. This foregrounding consequently helps convey
meanings, and the ultimate result is the realization of the text in a perlocutionary (the effect or
consequence of an utterance on the listener) level.

Artists do not serve their purpose if they are not creative. In literature, one could not possibly be
artistic without using language creatively. “a writer may be said to use language creatively if he
makes original use of established possibilities of the language and if he actually goes beyond those
possibilities, that is, if he creates new communicative possibilities which are not already in the
language”. Therefore, it means that writers may transcend the limitations of language to explore
and communicate new horizons of reality and experience. When creative writers purposively want
to be inventive with their language, they deviate from the conventional and everyday language of
their generation. With the use of unconventional language, they can make a strong impression on
the minds of their readers.

In the context of foregrounding, literature and art share several similarities; thus, it is justifiable to
study linguistic deviations against the artistic and aesthetic backdrop of foregrounding. As a
stylistic feature, foregrounding has the effect of defamiliarizing the reader by breaking the familiar
patterns. It also suspends the act of communication by breaking the norm through stylistic
variations that can be at the phonetic level (e.g., rhyme, alliteration etc.), the grammatical level
(e.g., ellipsis, inversion etc.), or the semantic level (e.g., metaphor, irony etc.)
Foregrounding concept sees that a text’s artistic and aesthetic uniqueness lies not in the exact
reproduction of a certain piece but in its deviations from the regulations or norms. For instance,
the creativity of a composer of a certain piece of music lies not in the repetition of regular rhythm

Kabs@2025
and melody but in its divergence from the musical norm, which is accepted and anticipated by the
audience. Similarly, the eyes, hearts, and minds of the reader will be captured by the foregrounding
part of the poem against the common background of language accepted by conventions

Semantic Deviation
Semantic is the study of meaning, it is also an area which literature interacts with other disciplines
such as linguistics, logic. Hermetics, philosophy, law and information science.
It is the level that deals with he meaning of a word, a word group, an idiom, a proverb, an utterance
and ultimately an entire text. Style is an aspect of form as opposed to content, but content has a
form and therefore semantics can be seen as an intermediate layer between form and content, it
helps us understand the relationship between form and content.

For example, the conflict between Lawino and Ocol in Song of Lawino section entitled “The
Graceful Giraffe Cannot Become a Monkey”

My husband tells me
I have no idea of modern beauty
He says
I have stuck
To old fashioned hair style

And later we are told

Ask me what beauty is

To the Acoli
And I will tell you
I will show it to you
If you give me a chance

The conflict between Lawino and Ocol is one of cultural values- the African and western. But in
this particular section, it manifests itself at the level of semantics. Ocol wants to impose his
meaning of beauty on Lawino. Lawino on the other hand proudly rejects Ocol conception of beauty
and counterposes her own to that of Ocol

The conflict between Okwonko and his community in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to an extent
revolves around what is meant by “men”. Reflecting on the past glories of Umofia, comparing the
past with the present state of affairs at the time of colonial conquest. Okonkwo says to himself,
“Those were the days when men were men,” this view is interesting from semantic point of view.
Men of course are still men in their biological and conventional sense- that is- adult human being
who are male. Okonkwo is however implying that men must of necessity or by definition be
courageous and fearless. Those who are cowards are not men.

The heroine of Leo Tolstoy’s novel. Anne Karenina in order, in order to justify her marital
defection, her adultery, argues that her legal husband does not understand “love”. By so doing she
makes certain assumption which are semantically interesting. The first assumption is the word

Kabs@2025
“love” has a definite meaning, which her husband does not understand. The second is that her lover
understands this meaning and is acting accordingly.

Semantic conflicts occur with respect to other words such as freedom, democracy, peace, terrorist,
etc. in your study of literature you will come across experts in the field who disagree fundamentally
on the semantic content of the word

The fact that battles are fought over the meanings of words underscore the importance of
semantics. For the purpose of stylistics, we need to take account of the meaning an author attaches
to a word. What Alex La Guma means when he uses a word like “freedom” might be very different
from what another writer from south Africa.

Semantic Deviation as a Stylistic Category

It is clear from the foregoing discussion that literary writers are always stretching and expanding
the possibilities of language in order to realize various aesthetic effects, and ultimately to
communicate new meaning and describe new experience. This is done at various levels:
phonological, syntactic, lexical and semantic .
Because of its nature, semantic deviation is the most direct, the most daring, and the most
“flagrant”. It compels us to re-examine the meaning of words and the experience they represent.
We are forced to take another look at our values and moral categories and the manner in which
they are represented in language

Semantic Redundancy (wordiness)

The mark of a good writing is brevity and precision. Literature does not create an impression of
wastage. Examples of redundancy:

i) Pleonasm

Pleonasm, as a figurative language, is used in such a way that differs somewhat from ordinary
everyday speech and conveys meanings in a more vivid and impressive manner. It is also a
redundant expression. It is a phrase which contains words of the same meaning, or words “the
meaning of which is contained elsewhere. Phrases such as, stupid fool, my female wife, her male
husband, cash money, free gift, abound in literary works.

Receive,be,received. The line above is a pleonasm stressing receive in the poem as in (You)
Receive,be,received., which means God as perceived is truth perceived. Receive,be,received could
mean that one cannot be received in the heavenly kingdom unless he receives the Good News of
salvation, which is God’s gift to man. pleonasm makes speech more effective as it beautifies and
emphasizes the speech in rhetoric, which is the art of speaking and writing effectively.

In Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan Ilych” we come across the following description of Ivan Ilych who has
just died.
“The dead man lay, as dead men always do lie, in a peculiar heavy, dead way.
His stiffened limbs sunk in the padding of the coffin, with the head bent back
forever on the pillow.”

Kabs@2025
On the surface this description is semantically superfluous. If a man is dead, he will obviously lie
in a dead way. And if his head bends on the pillow, it can only be forever. But this impression is
quite superficial. At deeper level, we discover that the author is talking not just about death, but
the experience of death as a special and important human experience. The dead man is not just a
corpse, his death has a meaning and a message for the living.

ii) Tautology

This is a statement that is semantically redundant, it usually purports to define something without
actually doing so. When it is effective, it becomes an ironic reminder of what we ought to know.
Ie a democrat is a person of democratic conviction. A lecturer is a person who lectures, a
tribalist is a believer in tribalism. All the three examples do not give any new information, but
deliberate ironic emphasis on what should be obvious to the reader or listener. Sarcasm is achieved
by tautology.

iii) Periphrasis (circumlocution)

This is the use of many words in place of a few (euphemisms) such as: she has been put in the
family way or he has kicked the bucket, fall under this category. Many idiomatic expressions in
English take the form of circumlocution. For example, instead of saying, Kenyans were dejected
when their ream drew in Gabon, we might say, Kenyans were down in the dumps when their team
drew in Gabon.

In Okot P’ Bitek’s Song of Lawino refers to her co-wife as “The woman with whom I share my
husband with” it might have been more economical to use the word “co-wife”, but is certainly
less expressive. In Lawino’s circumlocution, we detect a defense of polygamy, after all, she is a
defender of traditional African values and institutions, that involves wives sharing a husband.

Elsewhere Lawino refers to Ocol’s library as “a dark forest of books” thereby underscoring the
limitation and even ignorance of our book culture. She is equally ironic when she refers to the
Bible as “the clean book”
Periphrasis or circumlocution, purports to expand the semantic scope of the word for which it is a
substitute and by so doing expresses the attitude of the author.

Semantic Absurdity/ Semantic oddity

Semantically contradictory expressions and statements. Words that mean opposite things might be
conjoined or made to collocate. There are two kinds of semantic absurdity: Oxymoron and
paradox.

i) Oxymoron
oxymoron is one type of ridiculousness, which requires irreconcilable fundamentals of reference
or meaning. In layman’s understanding, it is a figure of speech which consists of a pair of related
contradictory words within a single [Link] “my friendly enemy” my female husband etc.,

In most of his plays, Shakespeare makes use of oxymora to develop a paradox, specifically in
Hamlet’s line, “I must be cruel, only to be kind” where he has drawn two incongruous ideas: “to

Kabs@2025
be cruel” and “to be kind.” This contradiction is drawn in the setting of the play where Hamlet
shows his willingness to kill King Claudius, the culprit behind the murder of his father, who
happens to have married his mother as well. Obviously in the play, Hamlet will purge his mother—
the beloved of his father’s murderer.

Those who have read Leonard Kibera’s play novel Voices in the Dark, might recall the description
of Gerald Timundu’s Plays as “brilliantly unsuccessful”. this is on the surface an absurdity; a Play
cannot be brilliant an unsuccessful at the same time. But what the author is telling us is that
“brilliance” and social “success” do not necessarily go together. The brilliance of these Plays was
a function of their unsuccessful nature, or that they were unsuccessful precisely because that they
were brilliant. Whatever it is, we have a very absurd collocation.

Leopold Senghor Sedar poem “prayer to masks” has told of “masks of unmasked faces” Senghor
here underscores the similarity between the regular masks and our social pretense, which are
masks. The poet is in effect expanding the semantic field of “masks” to incorporate the strategies
we use in society to conceal our true feelings.
An assumption made in semantics is that each lexical word covers an area of meaning called the
semantic field as we have seen above.

ii) Paradox
A paradox is a statement that contains semantically incompatible elements. Statement such as my
husband is a woman, my wife is a man. The example above on Shakespeare Hamlet fits as a perfect
example.

A paradox is an idea or a statement that expresses absurd contradicting ideas. It is “a statement that
contradicts itself”. In common conversations, a paradox seems absurd or contradictory, yet it
creates authentic reality. In information technology, a windows environment is a paradox that when
a user intends to ‘shut down’ his computer, it is necessary to click first the ‘start’ button.

Semantic Ambiguity
In literary works we often come across words whose meaning is indeterminate or ambiguous. A
writer might use a word with two or more meanings. Further, the experience he describes might
make the multiple interpretations equally tenable. This usually referred to as punning or word play,

Shakespeare sonnet 138 begins as follows:

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies

And the rhyming couplet reads:

Therefore, I lie with her and she with me

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Kabs@2025
We need not mention the paradox of believing somebody who you know is lying, but Shakespeare
is also playing on the meaning of lies. One meaning is to tell a lie, the other is to sleep with or
make love, or to lie with somebody. The two meaning can be extracted from the poem.

Word-play in poetry is often a source of pleasure for the reader. It opens up several possibilities of
interpretation, and part of the fun lies in figuring out just how many possibilities there are.
semantic ambiguity of the lexical items of this kind results from a normal feature of language: that
certain words have multiple meanings. What is deviant is having to use these words in contexts
that permit all the semantic possibilities. It is usually seen as a deliberate attempt on the part of the
literary writer to flout the rule of precision and clarity in communication

Kabs@2025