The word weavers: Newshounds and wordsmiths (review)

The study of language above the sentence level has taken a long time to be incorporated into linguistics proper. But more and more, we see all forms of linguistic expression as grist for our mills. Declaring that our work begins with phonetics and stops with syntax does not make much sense. Still, the study of connected discourse has been to recalcitrant to the methods of linguistic analysis developed over the twentieth century, and we are always looking for new ways to study it, whether they involve close examination of only one type of discourse (e.g. Labov & Waletzky 1967, the beginning of narrative analysis within linguistics; or Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974, the introduction of conversation analysis into linguistics), or cross-genre comparisons and contrasts (e.g. Bakhtin 1986:2–44, offering a categorization of discourse genres, or Tannen 1989, which looks at the uses of one device, repetition, across several different genres).

The word weavers, in the same vein, contrasts two types of contemporary formal written discourse: journalism and artistic writing (fiction and poetry). Aitchison is interested in structural differences between the discourse types, and why those differences exist; but she is also asking a more profound question: since most of the same structures occur in both genres, why do we value artistic writing so much more highly than journalism? Are there aesthetic reasons for considering the former superior to the latter, or are we confusing some notion of moral superiority with aesthetic excellence?

The book is intended for lay readers with little background in linguistics. Therefore A devotes the first three chapters to introducing such readers to the ways linguists think about language. Ch. 1 discusses the origins of language and the properties that make it unique among communicative systems. A notes the creativity of human language—the ability to say things that have never before been said, or never said in that way. She accepts without much discussion the theory of the monogenesis of language in Africa, arguing for it mostly on the basis of the universality of many linguistic traits. But one could as well attribute these to cognitive constraints; and a skeptic could note that languages are as diverse as they are similar.

The next set of chapters is devoted to the history of oral and later literate discourse types over time. A discusses the origins of narrative patterns and formulae in Proto-Indo-European, on the basis of recurrences of narrative patterns and formulae throughout the daughter languages. From the onset of general literacy, humans have maintained an uneasy balance between originality and formulaicity. Do we value artistic writing because it strives for the former, as A suggests? But we value the comforts of familiarity at least as much. As A shows later, that is a basis of journalistic prose style.

Next A discusses the history of the written form of language itself: the development of writing systems (from pictogram to alphabet), the problems of English spelling, text messaging as a new set of spelling conventions, and some distinctions between the possibilities of oral vs. written communication. A makes the statement that numerical counting, not pictures, was the origin of writing (34). But her arguments in favor of that position do not seem to demonstrate the truth of the hypothesis. Since we know that many modern writing systems arose from pictograms, the argument needs to be much stronger.

Another problem in the same section occurs with A's definition of logograms as 'symbols which represent linguistic units such as syllables or phonemes' (37–38). But most of us would define a logogram as a symbol that stands for a word or semantic concept—the opposite of a phoneme or syllable.

The following two chapters cover the rise of journalism from the ballads and broadsheets of the fifteenth century to the modern newspaper. Worries that newspapers are coarsening the culture by increasing our interest in scandal and sensation are at least partially put to rest by A's discussion of early broadsheets...