Allusions in the Press: An Applied Linguistic Study (review)

This study is concerned with ‘echoic’ allusions in the British press to a wide variety of sources, ranging from Shakespeare to Agatha Christie, from hymns to TV soap operas, and from proverbs to titles of songs, books, and other printed materials. In contrast to several previous studies of allusions in the press, Lennon includes in his corpus samples from every British daily from September 1995 through August 1996. For the purposes of his study he defines allusion as ‘an instance of text-based indirection … which [the reader] understands as intended implicature on the writer’s part, and which is signalled by foregrounded elements of the text’ (14–15).

Before discussing the method and results of his analysis, L takes up various theories of ‘indirect language comprehension’. Authors and works most prominently mentioned in the survey are M. A. K. Halliday’s Language as social semiotic (1978) and H. Paul Grice’s article ‘Logic and conversation’ (Syntax and semantics, vol. 3: Speech acts, ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58, New York: Academic Press, 1975).

According to L, among the syntactic structures of the alluding units, noun phrases and short sentences or clauses predominate. As to functions, L lists fifteen and assigns them to five functional domains. Some examples of the functions of allusions: to attract readers’ attention; to borrow stylistic effects; to convince readers by appealing to cultural values shared with them; to challenge readers cognitively and encourage them to continue reading; and to display the writer’s knowledge, values, or wit.

The text is richly illustrated by examples of allusions and supplemented by three dozen tables. A bibliography of primary sources (274–78) is followed by references (279–97). The results of L’s research are presented with great care and in considerable detail, but for most linguists they are likely to be of only limited interest.