Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre by the Brontës

DEMOCRATIC AND POPULAR REPUBLIC OF ALGERIA MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

UNIVERSITY OF ORAN

FACULTY OF LETTERS, LANGUAGES AND ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGES SECTION OF ENGLISH

DOCTORAL THESIS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL AND CUCULLLLTURALTURAL CONTEXTS ON WRITING : THE CASE OF WUTHERING HEIGHTS AND JANE EYRE BY THE BRONTËS

Presented By: Supervised By: KHADIDJA LAYADI Dr. ZOUBIR DENDANE Née MOUFFOK

Board of Examiners: Dr. RACHID BENALI-MOHAMED Chairman M.C. University of Oran Dr. ZOUBIR DENDANE Supervisor M.C. University of Tlemcen Pr. ABBES BAHOUS Examiner Pr. University of Mostaganem Pr. SMAIL BENMOUSSAT Examiner Pr. University of Tlemcen Pr. BOUTELDJA RICHE Examiner Pr. University of Tizi-Ouzou Dr ZOULIKHA BOUHADIBA Examiner M.C. University of Oran

2010

To those who could feel that something has been lost and gone for ever.

Acknowledgements

This thesis was made possible thanks to both my supervisors: Pr. Mohamed Dekkak and Dr. Zoubir Dendane. I wish to express my gratitude to Pr. Mohamed Dekkak for his comment and support; he helped so whole-heartedly and I was naturally encouraged at the warm reception that he accorded to this study. It enabled me to undertake carefully the research. Due to some forces of circumstance, I could not finish with him. Yet, it had been a pleasure for me to continue under Dr. Zoubir Dendane’s guidance.

I am profoundly grateful to my supervisor Dr. Zoubir Dendane for his generous comments on the whole work. His suggestions have stimulated important thought to complement the subject matter of this study. Hence, I owe a special acknowledgement to my supervisor Dr. Zoubir Dendane for his tact and practical advice.

My warmest thanks are due to the Chairman Dr.Rachid Bénali- Mohamed, for his continuous encouragement alongside the conception of this dissertation. I wish to express my sincere thanks to the examiners, Dr.Zoulikha Bouhadiba, Pr. Abbès Bahous, Pr. Smail Benmoussat and Pr.Bouteldja Riche for reading and commenting on this attempt to study language use in a literary corpus.

My thanks also go to Pr. Ronald Carter and Pr. Pauline Robinson for the indulgent ear they have inclined to this work.

Acknowledgement is also due to the Brontës Society in Haworth (Yorkshire) for providing great help in finding equivalent meanings of dialect of which I found difficulties in translating into standard English.

To all of them, I say cordially, I thank you from my heart.

ii Table of Contents

The Impact of Social and Cultural Contexts on Writing: The Case of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre by the Brontës.

Abstract vii

Introduction 1

Chapter one: Historical Background and Literature Review

1.1. Introduction 14

1.2. The Brontës’ biography 17

1.3. A brief survey of the Brontës’ work 19

1.4. Dialect representation in literature 26

1.4.1. Joan Beal’s view 26

1.4.2. Peter Trudgill’s view 27

1.4.3. Robin Carr’s view 28

1.5. Conclusion 31

Chapter two: Some Views on Code-switching as a result of social and cultural environments.

2.1. Introduction 33

2.2. Martinet ‘s view applied to the Brontës’ Writing 36

2.3.1. Weinreich’s view applied to the Brontës’ writing 39

2.3.2. Phonic interference in relation to the Brontës’ writing 40

2.3.3.Grammatical interference 42

iii

2.4. Mixed language 43

2.4.1. Other views on Bilingualism and Code-Switching 44

2.4.2. Code-switching versus borrowing 45

2.5. Lexical monemes 47

2.6.1 Borrowing 48

2.6.2.Tracing 50

2.7 The Brontës lexical competence 51

2.8. The use of French by the Brontës and code-switching 55

2.8 What is bilingualism? 56

2.10.1. Einar Haugen’s definition 58

2.10.2. W.F. Mackey’s definition 60

2.11. The didactic language 61

2.12. Conclusion 63

Chapter Three : Code –Switching in the two novels

3.1. Introduction 65

3.2. The use of a Yorkshire dialect 68

3.3. The use of slang 81

3.4. Words and phrases in French 82

3.5. Latin idiomatic expressions 92

3.6. Words and phrases in German 94

3.7. Conclusion 96

Chapter four : Meaning in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre

4.1. Introduction 98

4.2. Semantics / Pragmatics 99

4.3. Functions of the use of local dialects 111

4.4. Paradigmatic patterning in conversation 117

4.5. The power of language in songs, tales 122

4.6. Intentional and Pathetic fallacy in the Brontës’ writing 126

4.7. Influence of Victorian on the Brontës’ writing 135

4.8. The function of dreams and the sociolinguistic meaning of silence 141

4.9.Conclusion 151

General Conclusion 154

Appendix I 159

Appendix II 193

Glossary 208

Bibliography 228

“ But dreams like this I cannot bear, And silence whets the fang of pain; I felt the full flood of despair Returning to my breast again.”

Emily Brontë.

vi Abstract

The need to examine the use of language in relation to the social and cultural contexts has always served to understand and interpret properly literary works. On this matter, one may assert that these contexts deeply impact on writing. Most of the time the authors are satirical, when we consider, for example, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre written respectively by Emily and Charlotte Brontë. Thus in this work I have tried to analyse some sociolinguistic instances in both novels.

I hope the first chapter will help to understand and appreciate the next ones. In a rather brief way, it deals with dialect representation in literature and some biographical elements are integrated to stimulate reading this work and enhance interest in it.

The second part of this study is based on a kind of distinction between borrowing and code-switching in addition to the stress that has been put on the use of a Yorkshire dialect. This shows clearly that the Brontës, as writers, are not just dealing with one single language that is Standard English but with other languages as well.

The third part is devoted to code-switching in the two novels. Throughout both novels, the choice of language, if not of words, is a connotation of a kind of symbolism which is typical to the Victorian Age. Moreover, speech differences do have a strong influence on personal relationships. The fourth part has been devoted to ‘semantics’ versus ‘pragmatics’, the significations of which, are still debated since ‘meaning’ is deduced from more than the sense of the isolated words in any utterance, but it has

vii to be inferred through a whole system. Many factors including biographical, social and cultural aspects as well as traditions, play an important part for a better understanding of literary works. All those factors are designed to help get closer to the context in which code-switching is produced.

viii

Introduction:

Linguists have always insisted on the interdependence of language and cultural and social structures, and language cannot be considered in isolation from social life according to anthropologists. Speaking does of course, follow rules of grammar, but it also reflects the users’ personal choices of language and the sociological recognition of language in society. Ferdinand de Saussure ’s (1916) dichotomous distinction between ‘langue’ and ‘parole’ is rephrased, from time to time, as the distinction between language and speech, code and message, competence and performance . In fact the notion of ‘langue’ refers to a totality of grammatical rules shared by all the members of a linguistic community, whereas ‘parole’ refers to actual utterances of individual speakers.

In the present research, we are interested in the relationship between a society, that is a community of speakers, and their languages. Language is used to fulfil several functions and “ a linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods, are equally flagrant anachronisms.”(Roman Jakobson,1960 ). Language reflects the socio-cultural organisation of the inhabitants of Haworth and the quality of their verbal behaviour which depends to a large extent on social and cultural conditions. Moreover, the impact of social and cultural contexts is fully expressed in the local people’s tales, songs and even dreams, the functions of which can be related to both domains:

semantics and pragmatics . Throughout this study, we intend to check whether the previous opinion that literature has nothing to do with linguistics, is in itself a linguistic attitude or not , as Orwell 1 puts it concerning the relationship he sees between art and politics .

On this matter , Carter and Long ( 1987 : 1 ) write that ‘ at an advanced level , students have studied more English literature than they have studied the English language’ or they have studied them separately. Now, there is a considerable need for studying literature in relation to language and this leads to people ’s understanding and appreciating literary language . Moreover, switches from one language to another or to another variety occur not only in face-to-face interactions but also in any genre and any kind of literature . How words carry strong meanings in any piece of writing may reveal the organisation of a whole society. This is truly valid for the present study which attempts to consider the Brontë as a whole.

At another level, Philippe Beneton (1992) believes that the considerations of vocabulary are so serious that they cannot be abandoned to the only competence of linguists. He probably wants to say that other specialists and philosophers should also be concerned with finding solutions, since, as Turgot (quoted in Beneton,1992) mentioned well before Ferdinand de Saussure, words have no necessary relationship with what they express.

1 Quoted in Arab, 1982 :vii.

Thus, the grammatical system is the social part of language and has ‘potential existence in each mind of a group of individuals’ (De Saussure,1916). The great majority of linguists believe that even in monolingual speech communities the linguistic repertoire of particular social networks may consist of several social class varieties, or of social class and regional varieties, or, even of social class, regional and occupational varieties of the same language. In other words, these linguists would like to say that not only multilingual speech communities utilise a repertoire of language varieties, since even monolingual natives of a certain region in Yorkshire speak differently to others, i.e. the same speaker may use different ways depending on the interlocutor. on different occasions and this can be pin-pointed phonologically, i.e. in the way the words are pronounced, lexically, i.e. in the choice of words that are used and grammatically, i.e. in the systematic relationship between words 2.

It is all a question of when to say the one and when to produce the other for the writers of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre; Joseph’s use of local dialect, whoever addressee he is confronted to, may illustrate this case. Can this be considered as situational shifting or metaphorical shifting on the part of the writer since, as it has been stated by Fishman (1965) and agreed by others, ‘a variety is not just a different language or a different social dialect’ 3 but it is also a different

2 The same young man who sometimes says ‘ I sure hope yuz guys ’ ll shut the lights before leavin ’ is also quite likely to say , or at least to write , ‘ Kindly extinguish all the illumination prior to vacating the premises ’ . Giglioli , 1990 : 48 . 3 Op. cit , 1990 : 48 .

occupational dialect or a different regional dialect. Whenever any two varieties are present in the linguistic repertoire of a social ‘network’ the concept of situation is commonly utilised.

The novel has been priviliged as a window opening onto the characters of different nations and peoples. But the novel is more than a reflection of the social- historical happening outside its confines. In fact, it may also decide on the phonological distinctiveness which can be seen as an important indicator of a regional dialect. People of different social or cultural classes can be identified by the way they speak. “Literate and illiterate do not use precisely the same version of English”.3 In consequence, rural people are more likely to use particular vowel qualities than urban people and regionalisms might be found in intonation or voice quality: for instance the characters using a Yorkshire dialect and those whose utterances are produced in ‘Standard English’ .

The art of rhetoric, of dressing up plain talk in a variety of fancy ways although the pictures are based on reality but the style is more elaborate and formal than in most everyday language. In the latter, the words are more familiar to the hearer . But anyone who is about to study a work of literature, as pointed by Cunningham ( 1985 : 9 ), has to bear in mind two questions : ‘what did this mean when it was written ?’ Even meaning is subject to change with the passing of time . Moreover I wonder about how the writer emphasizes the tension between characters

3 Winifred Gérin .

and what speech reveals? Can we consider a speech community as homogeneous or does it include a number of smaller other speech communities ? It is assumed that the writer show us his awareness of the social and cultural impact on the Yorkshire inhabitants’ conditions. Yet, to understand the writing of the past , one has to know something of the background of the Brontës, i.e. the writers, and the general views about the authors . Other crucial questions one should ask oneself are : to what extent do social and cultural contexts influence writing? And how often do the Brontës code-switch to assert this impact? Is social meaning in literature affected by the writers’ lives? And what ways? We assume that these writers have command of both standard English and local dialect. We can also assume that some powerful speeches are able to embody the meaning of the message of the whole novel. Hence it is the case of the Brontës. Probably, meaning is affected by the authors’s lives, but how?

To apply this statement to our work, it should be stressed that the whole background is but typical to a specific region in England where a certain group of people are cohabiting, and communicating their ideas and desires; the overtones of the words used in both novels are not just those of the direct meaning and the focus should be on the most important . Looking at sentences and understanding the message they convey, in other words , ‘ making sense ’ of a written text , does not normally involve saying the word we read or understanding its separate meaning, ‘not even silently inside our heads’, as stated by Adrian Doff (1995:23). The whole of the idiomatic expressions not to mention the proverbs are

part not only of the English culture but also of the English language as well, since language is behaviour.

Moreover, this behaviour is also an underlying factor which contributes to the plot and thus to all the languages chosen by the writers in both novels. It works using deeper forces but the characters carry out their actions from their personal choice and their own responsibility as it has been pointed out by a lot of critics. Despite her clear speech , Catherine goes on her free will : she chooses to marry Edgar. Probably, the story could not have been fully felt if it was not told with the help of words with such strong impact on themselves and specially on readers . Metaphors , selected terms , shifts , and ‘near poetry passages’, and all the available means are used by these writers to transmit their messages . Joseph uses a lot of terms referring to religion and swear by his Saints.

Other images are evoking nature, trees , moors , flowers and the like and the poetic passages add to the emotion, sometimes in a form of a dialogue and other times it is about a confession presented in a clear monologue . Obviously , their function is to increase theitr impact on readers and above all to heighten and enhance the different situations and make them more dramatic or fatalistic . The most vivid example would be that of the destruction of Catherine . What characters say , and how they say it will reveal all the emotive function of language. To mention on what occasion, and their psychological state of mind at the moment they produce their speech , are important issues in the novels.

In this work we have tried to analyse from a sociolinguistic point of view, two novels written by the Brontë sisters, Charlotte and Emily in order to see what sort of bidialectalism or what kind of code-switching characterise their writings . These two phenomena i.e. the two socio-linguistic facts, occur in language use thanks to the contact of different characters and thus of different cultures or at least different backgrounds. Yet, all the characters are involved in a given pattern of human relationship guided by human constants such as love and hatred , jealousy and kindness and the non-linguistic variables such as participants, topic, setting, have their impact on the Brontës’ language choice.

Even the non-verbal motions used in communication, i.e. gestures, facial expressions, convey meaning to the listener or to the reader. The social and cultural contexts are over determinant. They serve to detect the real sense of the selected speech acts and speech events in writing. Yet, the themes may be universal in some cases like the one of starvation, suffering childhood, the passing of time, the absurdity of this ephemeral life itself, or love. But how does the writer emphasize the linguistic tension between Heathcliff and Catherine? Or between Hareton and Cathy or Mr Rochester and Jane? Where does conversation take place?

What happens later to make the characters’ speech sounds sometimes ironical, and other times dramatic? In a word, what does speech reveal? What is the function of all these

stylistic differences in both novels? One may wonder what would have happened if the Brontës had allowed their characters to use only Standard English? This could not have reflected the actual linguistic situation. Consequently, another question should be taken into consideration: How many speech communities are there within the same speech community? And is it possible to put boundaries between them in case there are many? Finally, could the theory that ‘writing is language that is visible and durable’, be applied to the Brontës’ novels? Obviously, any speech community is potentially influenced by the social environment.

My dissertation will be made up of four chapters; the first one is concerned with the historical background, i.e. a short biography of the writers and a summary of the two literary tendencies in the nineeenth century: the Romantic Period and the Victorian Age. The former is characterised by poetry and one of the major figures is William Wordsworth who succeeded in meditation in front of Nature in his Lake District, precisely in Grasmire, in the little house named ‘Dove Cottage’. And Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817) which studies the importance of language for the Romantics. The later period is the most important in relation to my study as the authors and their novels are associated with that period and the setting is that of a remote place in England, Haworth.

Chapter two examines and highlights some definitions of bilingualism and code-switching. I would like to try to clarify my stance concerning these two concepts: code-switching would be

characterised by the presence or intrusion of other language in ‘Standard English’ in the two novels. For example a shift to the French language used by Adèle, a character in Jane Eyre , is an instance of code-switching. Moreover, Emily Brontë lets her characters express themselves in their own Yorkshire dialect - without any intervention on her part. The Brontës’ lexical competence is obviously shown in the different ‘paroles’ used by all the members of that speech community. It also deals with these three abstractions: language, dialect and idiolect and the co- existence within a single speaker’s competence of more than a single grammar.

In addition, writing, as a linguistic process of comprehension, has a lot in common with oral language comprehension. The case of dialogues in both novels will be a good example. These writers seem compelled towards meaning, that meaning which only comes into being thanks not only to the listener in fiction but also the other listener in reality, the reader. Both of them can introduce a kind of social realm of subjectivity.

To unravel some of the mysteries of human thinking one has to use semantics to refer to almost every aspect of meaning that is not syntactic . Although the majority of the servants use the local dialect to express themselves, when they are speaking the words are ‘simple’ and direct. However, characters like Jane Eyre, Heathcliff or Catherine Earnshaw make use of powerful , romantic language, dictated by the authors’ competence.

Since the time I became interested in British literature, I have found it passionate to combine the study of literature to that of language. Hence in chapter three I will deal with the listing and the occurence of all the emerging phenomena due to bilingualism if not biculturalism, and which I tried to classify under the following labels such as: dialect, slang, words and phrases in French, Latin idiomatic expressions not to mention German words and phrases; in short, that inevitable shift from one culture to another. Utterances in local dialect are selected from Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as an appendix with their equivalent meaning in Standard Englih.

In both novels pieces of splendid literary art are going hand in hand with the use of vernacular speech, illustrated - for example - in the utterances of Joseph. Probably the words are not familiar to the reader but the writer does not care of this, since for her these utterances are correct and the most appropriate to the context. Nevertheless, translation into Standard English is avoided due to the fact that it is very difficult to translate from one culture to another even in the same culture or region. Looking for the equivalent idiomatic expressions in a living language like English would be a very difficult task since it is changing all the time. Moreover, the characters’ social backgrounds are different and there is little common cultural history between them, except that provided by the universal themes; yet, each one with his idiosyncratic features .

The influence of the authors’ background is so powerful that they succeeded in creating the immense confusion between reality and fiction by the use of different languages and different idiolects selected according to the appropriate circumstance and situation . Yet , meaning is not just expressed with words but also with several minute descriptions of pauses and gestures, not to mention that inevitable silence. One may wonder what is considered as silence, the one that contributes to the interlocutor’s comprehension of the message or another one which adds to its ambiguity.

The last chapter investigates some functions of borrowing and code-switching and all that paradigmatic patterning in conversation. Undoubtedly, one has to bear in mind that this study can only be fruitful if we begin to think of a kind of demarcation line between semantics and pragmatics; semantics in the sense of the study of word meanings and their effects on communication, interaction, and interpersonal relationships, whereas pragmatics is the study of the correlation forms to situational settings. To comprehend all the characters’ s behaviour in the fiction, one has to be taken into the virtual world of these other people’ s minds and then invited to explore it; the task is not an easy one because words have no necessary relationship with what they express. Yet, the whole contexts are here perhaps in order to facilitate the comprehension of certain facts, like some speech acts or some speech events in writing. In addition to the power of language in dialogues, songs, tales, religious idiomatic expressions and traditional lore have to be mentioned.

The functions of the forms of address used in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre differ from one situation to another: subordinates to children, servants to children and to adults too, not to mention the so-called ‘religious’ characters always present in order to address younger people and to preach to them what is forbidden and what they deserve in case they fail to follow the adults’ instructions. Finally, the analysis of the greatest moments in both novels are necessary to the explanation of the pathetic fallacy ( influence of the writers’ lives on the different paroles; landscape and climate, weather versus characterisation ) which submerge the whole atmosphere of the Brontës’ writing; the functions of dreams, and also the sociolinguistic meaning of silence which contribute to the mystery of both places Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. I will see when people talk about dreams and what their function is in both novels ; and when they begin to tell stories. Consequently, I would like to stress the fact that feeling gives importance to action and situation and thus to language choice . A selection of some Byronic images , Heathcliff ’s and Mr Rochester ’ s behaviour in some instances will be studied too . They figure as the greatest moments in fiction which resemble the climax of drama .

I may be inclined to mention that narrative form in an ‘ ever-expanding range of geographical and cultural sites ’ in the Brontës’ writings. Moreover , one has also to state the failure of temporal narrative which adds to the mystery of the characters’ thinking and thus of human beings in general.

This leads to that inevitable and incredible return to the past. Another important matter is that the logical sequence of events in Emily Brontë’ s novel is broken. This is mainly due to the narrator’s return to the Past , thanks to the technique of repeated flashbacks. In addition, all the mentioned recollections serve not only as a rememberance to Nelly herself but also as an integral part of the contemporary present. One illustration would be that of the young Cathy, ‘insofar as History is a record of people and events that pass into pasts .4’ But, how can this Past be preserved? This will be another concern and we would perhaps move to the domain of nostalgia .

4 in Deidre Lynch, 1966 :416 .

Chapter One :

Historical Background and Literature Review

1.1 Introduction

Literature is the expression of the people’s voice. It is able to show in the different walks of life : happiness, sorrow, psychological state of mind, change in the society for instance from peace to war time in addition to the different alterations due the new movements taking place in the rural and urban life. If we consider the nineteenth century we will see that it comprises two parts, a Romantic period followed by the Victorian Age. Romanticism is the outcome of a revolt against the conventionalism of classicism and also against the abstract and rationalistic tendencies of the previous century. Both in style and in subject. There is a return to nature as opposed to convention and a revival of imaginative sensibility in the domain of the senses as well as in that of the spiritual. The Romantic period is marked by the American Revolution of 1776 and the spirit of ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’( Carter and Mc Rae, 1996: 103) of the French Revolution. It is a time of hope and change which lasted from 1789 to the Reform act of 1832. Yet, there are many divergences between poets and writers; for instance, Coleridge points at the supernatural as if he were a spirit himself whereas William Wordsworth tried just to describe the ordinary world and his condition as a ‘human being’.

England was the first country to become industrialised but being fist has a compensation. The effect of these developments on

Victorian writers had been described in books. They reacted because the period was one of dynamic change, of ferment of ideas and recurrent social unrest. We are interested in the early Victorian phase that has been sometimes characterised as the ‘Time of Troubles’ by most writers of this period like for instance the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832.

Another problem is the influence of the social context on writing, like the property passing from one hand to the other. Indeed, this has been revealed in both novels. In fact, women did not have their ‘rights’ and their possessions must pass to their husbands’ hand. Since the writers did not agree with this law, they managed to denounce it with the help of a language that goes beyond the conventional sociolinguistic rules of the period. Moreover, among all these speakers of English, many are using their own dialects if not their personal registers: and the writer of Jane Eyre goes as far as to allow Adèle to make use of her previous mother tongue i.e. French.

To assert whether these choices of language denote a kind of sincerity or not is another issue when we consider Joseph in Wuthering Heights and Mr.Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre; obviously they are far away from this virtue. Each speech, each utterance is but hypocritical. In addition, the influence of the writers’ lives serves to enhance the cultural impact on their writing; they were influenced by the Gothic vision of the world, by Byron, Shakespeare and even Milton: the stoic and cynic language used by Heathcliff to get revenge, Paradise Lost versus Innocence, Love and the lost childhood and those monologues all along both narratives resemble drama.

Usually, writers react against the ills of society with strong language and behaviour, then at the end of the eighteenth century the novel took a novel direction. The Castle of Otranto by Orace Walpole (1764) started the fashion of the Gothic as a form of discourse.5 One characteristic of this genre is that the horror novel is set in medieval times with castles and ghosts, appearances and dreams. The Gothic should give the pleasure of the mysterious and the frightening which led to an important break from the rational of the Augustans.( Carter and Mc Rae,1996:88)

At this point, begins the focus on feeling which is typical to the early Romantic writers. We may also mention Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Indeed, in the Brontës’ writing one may notice all the sinister elements of Gothicism added to malicious aunts, abusive husbands. Jane Eyre is considered as a gothic novel in the sense that it reveals ‘escape’, childhood terrors, threatening sights and sounds and above all the supernatural with its terrifying atmosphere.

Furthermore, in Wuthering Heights hallucinations and horrible visions are acutely described in a language that heightens passion then death. Even the Ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine are said to wonder on the Moors.

5 Carter and Mc Rae, 1996 :88.

1.2. The Brontës.

Undoubtedly a brief review of the authors’ life and their times have to be mentioned from the very beginning of this study. The relevance of any biographical material is necessary for whatever ‘language’ used in writing. The ground in question in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre is that of the Yorkshire Moors near Haworth for the former and concerning the latter, boarding schools and ancient manors are mentioned thoughout the novel. In addition to this, the life of the Brontës at Haworth is a ‘national legend’( Stephen Coote,1984:9). Charlotte (born in 1816) was the eldest sister and Emily, the second of three literary sisters; all of them nursed their only brother Patrick Branwell Brontë who fell in debt then he took to drink; his gloomy presence in the house adds to the atmosphere of their whole life. This also accounts for the stigmas left in Emily’s mind and mirrored in Wuthering Heights, her unique masterpiece in British literature. In addition she wrote several interesting poems.

The children spent their life in the Yorkshire more precisely in the Parsonage in Haworth where Patrick Brontë, their father, was clergyman. Their mother and their two sisters died during their inancy Maria and Elisabeth were in the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. Emily Jane Brontë is born on the 30th of July 1818 in Thornton and she died on December the 19th 1848 in Haworth. Charlotte was marked for life by her experiences as a teacher from 1835 to 1838, then as a governess; the most relevant event is that later in 1842 she went with Emily to study languages in Brussels. She died in March 1855.

They began to write when they were still little children about a world of epic heroes. Coote noted the contradiction between these writers’ shyness and the vividness of the creation of the characters in their imagination:

They created worlds of epic heroes, and so real were these to them that it is easy to see how, as they grew up, these shy, passionate women could give such life to the vivid heroes of their novels.’ (Coote, 1984: 9)

Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are considered as the most popular novels in the English literary canon. The story of the Brontë sisters’ brief lives is almost as well known as their writing. Indeed, their home Haworth Parsonage, has become one of the most visited of the literary shrines. The story of the Brontë family was not simply one of tragedy, the loss of their mother, and isolation. For nearly twenty years before the appearance of Jane Eyre, the parsonage at Haworth was a place of lively creative activity. These gifted children had constructed a whole world, with its ‘own geography, politics and dramatis personae’ ( Stancliffe, 2003:vi) – modelled at first on real public figures ( writers, artists, explorers ) but gradually evolving into completely fictional characters. Simulation also takes place when reading or listening to narratives: what (Carrol, 1956 ) so often called ‘ audience identification with a character’ is best described as the mental simulation of the character’s situation’ by the audience who are then better able to imagine the character’s experience. All these facts and events already mentioned played a crucial role in the Brontës’ language use and choice.

1.1. A brief survey on the Brontës’ work

Emily Brontë

Mr. Lockwood explains what is meant by ‘ Wuthering Heights’: The name of this removed ‘dwelling’ denotes a combination of a ‘geographical inaccessibility’ with ‘linguistic unfamiliarity’. The choice of words like: ‘tumult’, ‘stormy weather’, ‘bracing ventilation’, ‘north wind’ is not fortuitous. And the personification of the thorns with their limbs is added to the harshness of the atmosphere. The verb ‘defended’ used by the end of the struggle of two inanimate things, has a strong connotation. Yet, there is a big difference between them, because one is static whereas the other is dynamic; two forces are facing each other. Heathcliff’s dwelling is described this way:

‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which the house’s station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all times, indeed one amy guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by arrange of gaunt thorns all stretching their lumbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to built it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.6

6Wuthering Heights, p.4.

For Steve Vine The ‘Heights’ of the house, itself suggests a kind of extremity, as if the house is located at the limits of the habitable places and as if, in these sublime extremes, the domestic is always about to pass into the ‘atmospheric’, and Heathcliff’s solid dwelling into an indeterminate ‘wuthering’. Vine’s definition of a ‘wuther’ a variant of Scots and dialect English ‘ whither’, can mean an ‘attack, onset; a smart blow or a stroke’. In this sense, the house is always under attack from the outside; it may also mean ‘to tremble, shake, quiver’…7

According to Stephen Coote ( 1985), Heathcliff bestrides the novel, Wuthering Heights, and no simple account can do justice to the richness, depth and variety of his personality. He is as powerful and amoral as the forces of nature with which he is often compared. He is both worldly and profoundly romantic. Love and hatred merge in him and both are extreme. Moreover, his origins are unknown. This gives him not only the pathos of the orphan but an air of mystery that deepens into the suspicion that he is connected with the devil.

On this matter, Gérin ( 1985:226) mentioned the time when the first shiploads of Irish immigrants were landing at Liverpool and dying in the cellars of the warehouses on the quays. Their images, and specially those of the children, were unforgettably depicted in the Illustrated London News – starving scarecrows with a few rags on them and an animal growth of black hair almost obscuring their features. The relevance of such features cannot be overlooked in explaining Emily’s choice of Liverpool for the scene of Mr Earnshaw’s encounter with ‘the gipsy brat Heathcliff, ‘ dirty,

7 Oxford English Dictionary, 1989 quoted in Vine,1994 :81.

ragged, black-haired,’ ‘ as dark as almost as though it came from the devil.’

Moreover, it spoke ‘some gibberish that nobody could understand,’ as did the children of the famine who knew nothing but Erse. Gérin herself wondered whether Heathcliff was not first given a being and a body by Branwell’s report of starving immigrants’ children in the Liverpool streets?” As a result from the start Heathcliff brings destruction ; but the passionate, self-willed little boy can also inspire love. He and Catherine wander freely on the moors. They are natural extroverts.

Before coming to the Moors in Yorkshire Mr. Lockwood had a love affair. He stayed in Thrushcross Grange where Nelly Dean the housekeeper lived. To meet his landlord, Heathcliff, he had to go to Wuthering Heights. Mr. Lockwood was so astonished by Heathcliff’s personality that he returned the following day. Unfortunately he was strangled by a snowstorm and could meet Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Linton. Lockwood was obliged to spend the night at Wuthering Heights in a mysterious room, on the walls of which are names of Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff and Catherine Linton scratched into the paint. There were books where he could read on the blank margins Catherine’s diary. Therefore he had an idea about the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine and also about Joseph the servant and his religion.

As soon as he went to sleep, he had a nightmare so he began to shout; Heathcliff did not understand what was happening since he believed nobody was allowed to sleep there; he then came and

ordered Lockwood to leave. However, he saw Heathcliff shouting and crying and sobbing to the ghost of Catherine. Back to Thrushcross Grange Lockwood caught a fever and was obliged to stay with Nelly Dean, who told him the whole story of Heathcliff, the master of both Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights.

She began with Mr. Earnshaw the original owner of Wuthering Heights; when the latter was in Liverpool, he found an abandoned baby whom he adopted and named Heathcliff. ‘ the baby was dark skinned, with a hint of the diabolic about him .(p.77) On his way home he broke all the toys he had promised to bring to his children, Catherine and Hindley. They showed their anger when they see the ‘destructive’ little boy instead of their promised gifts and thus hindley despised him from the beginning.

On the other hand, Mr. Earnshaw and Catherine considered him as a member of the family and a ‘great childhood friendship’ grows between Catherine and Heathcliff as they ramble on the moors in defiance of Joseph’s gloomy religious rules. ( p.87) After the death of Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley came to the funerals with a sickly and neurotic wife; The first thing he began with was to degrade Heathcliff to the status of a servant although he had always been considered as a son and even been preferred by his father, which lead to his revenge. As they roamed the moors, Catherine and Heathcliff went one day to spy on their neighbours, the Lintons by whom they were caught and reprimanded. (pp. 89-92)

She stayed at Thrushcross Grange for five weeks to be nursed at the lintons’ house, because she has been chased by the dogs and

injured. At this point, he actually saw the difference of treatment between Catherine and himself: she had been seen as a young lady whereas he was told off and sent home like a servant. Catherine returned as a transformed young lady, she kissed him but langhed at him when her brother Hindley introduced him as one of the servant. At this moment he decided to change when Nelly Dean saw the ‘traces of the dark’ and sinister in him. ( pp. 97-98)

Nelly Dean declares that Catherine has now taken a ‘double character’. There is the Catherine that Heathcliff loves and the young lady that Edgar courted. Catherine is bound body and soul to Heathcliff, to the Moors and to earthly passion. Her speech reaches the heights of poetry as she describes the universe that is contained in Heathcliff.

After her death, Heathcliff confesses to Nelly Dean that he can never forget his deep love for Catherine; since he has tried to dig up her grave, he has been haunted by her ghost for nearly eighteen years. The novel ends with Lockwood’s visit to the graveyard and his meditation on the dead lovers’s peace - like in a Shakespearian drama - although the neighbours believed the place is haunted by Heathcliff’s ghost.

It is largely through Nelly Dean that our opinion of Edgar forms and changes. He never achieves the romantic stature of Catherine and Heathcliff. Emily Brontë does not mean him to. But what Nelly does come to admire in his Christian fortitude after Catherine’s death, thanks to the language he used. Yet, time brings resignation.

Charlotte Brontë

In the first five chapters Charlotte Brontë gives her reader a description of Jane’s life with her aunt, Mrs. Reeds and her three cousins, Eliza, Georgiana and John at Gateshead Hall. Then if we consider haw Anne Holker divided up Jane Eyre into sections related to the heroine’s major journeys: they are five. The first from Gateshead to Lowwood in the January of her tenth year; then she moved to Thornfield in October when she was eighteen. After she went to Gateshead and back to Thornfield the following May; another journey to Marsh end in July and finally the last decisive journey from Moor to Thornfield the next year in May. Jane makes her way to Thornfield Hall, Mr. Rochester’s home, where the elderly and kind Mrs. Fairfax receives her. She has been hired to teach Miss Varens. So, she meets her and her French maid.

Mr. Reed’s favourite sister died after the baby Jane was born. Mrs. Reed had been very jealous of the baby when her husband made her promise on his deathbed to look after Jane as her own child. Eight years later, we learn that there was a public outcry against the terrible conditions at Lowood so the pupils’ life becomes happier than before, when Mr. Brocklehurst was ruling the school. During the course of the the novel we see Jane Eyre develop from a ten year-old girl living miserably at Gateshead with the Reeds, to a radiantly happy and mature woman of thirty, married to her beloved Mr Rochester. In the course of these twenty years, Jane has her share of unhappiness and strife and it is the way in which the numerous troubles that make her such an admirable heroine : patient, intelligent, and morally strong.

Charlotte Brontë spends a great deal of time and trouble describing the physical appearance of Rochester, and this reveals that the power of' this description denotes a certain fascination the author has for her hero. One may remember how St John is portrayed as a rather cold man: 'Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier.' Rochester is never described as a perfect masculine beauty; he looked rather

preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against the swilling back of his chair, receiving the light of the fire on his granite hewn features, and in his great dark eyes, for he had great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too – not without a certain change in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you least of that feeling.

He himself confesses to Jane:

I am not a gentle tempered man – you forget that: I am not long enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and – beware!

It is worth citing one interpretation quoted in Allott ( 1974:110), which says that throughout Jane Eyre there is a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and the privations of the poor. There is that pervading tone of discontent which is at once the most prominent and the most subtle evil which the law and the pulpit, which all civilized society has at the present to content with. Undoubtedly, we do not hesitate to say that the tone of the mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine

abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre.

1.4. Dialect Representation in Literature

1.4.1. Joan Beal’s view

In her paper “The Idea of a dialect: dialect, literature and the enregisterment of urban dialect in 19th century England”, Joan Beal mentions two different ways to study dialect in literature i.e. two approaches to analyse non-standard English in literary texts. The first one is the dialectological, which uses literary texts as evidence of the spoken language and it considers the sense provided by the use of the dialect as the non-standard English. Probably, this be applied to the Brontës’ writing as an evidence for the dialect which is often a historical fact. The other approach is stylistic, which puts the stress on how realistic the effectiveness of the dialect or nonstandard language in a particular text and context is. Its function is considered within the literary work as a whole.To render it better a definition of the term ‘ enregisterment is given. According to Agha (2003) it is

the recognition of the relationship between specific linguistic features and certain cultural values. These values are tied to people through notions that link language use to beliefs about ‘ authentic’ local identity and the uniqueness of the dialect; speaker’s local authenticity is, in part, based on the use of enregistered features…speakers rely on enregistered features to perform this identity for locals as well as outsiders.

Hence this way of thinking specifically about the cultural values get attached to the linguistic features and how, why, and when they get attached . Moreover, the representation of dialect in literature involves the use of pertinent linguistic elements which makes us think about dialect in literature . This dialect is a regional or social variety of a language distinguished from the standard language used by the writer. One may wonder how nonstandard language in fiction can be taken as a reliable source for a sociolinguistic analysis. Hence various examples of direct speech will be commented.

In fact, the use of dialect in literature , code- switching and borrowing can serve as a reliable source for linguistic research. The Brontës are aware about an authentic usage of dialects and varieties, not necessarily in the faithful transcription of phonology, morphology, and syntax, but rather in th realistic representation of language in relation to the characters who use them when these writers want to illustrate a particular state of reality. They also add in their writing the description of gestures and facial expression because they play a part in linguistic communication.

1.4.2. Peter Trudgill’s view

If someone thinks that these novels ‘use bad language’ he has just to hear what Peter Trudgill answers (1975:28); he asserts that:

Judgements which apppear to be about language are in fact judgements based on social and cultural values, and have much more to do with the social structure of our community than with language.What happens is that, in any society, different groups of people are evaluated in different ways.

He adds that some groups or speech communities cannot have the same prestige and status. Thus dialects and accents associated to those who have more prestige ‘ tend to be more favourably evaluated than other varieties.’ A dialect associated with high-prestige social groups are regarded as ‘good’ and ‘attractive’. Once more “ judgements about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ languages are therefore based on social connotations of dialects and accents rather than anything inherent in the linguistic varieties themselves. We may conclude that speakers are more important than speech in the evaluation of language. One example in the novels is the ‘double negation’ in the dialect used in literature. It serves to inform the reader and to signal the character’s regional and social background. And the example of Chaucer is given to stress that this fact has existed in nearly all English dialects. In the Brontës’ writing dialect is of course restricted to dialogue. Obviously characters in novels do not speak like authors. Their speech reveals more sincerity about the Victorian class system personified through them. Yet, the real meaning may differ from what they say when we just consider John’s christianity, one of the most sincere kind, compared for example to Mr. Brocklehurst and Elisa Reed who profess to be followers of Christ but are both in their own ways hypocritical. Brocklehurst’s religion is all bombast and show.

1.4.3. Robin Carr’s view

A dialect is considered as a regional or a social variety of a language distinguished by pronounciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary

language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists: cockney is a dialect of English; belonging to a specific geographical localities or social classes. This is the case of the Yorkshire dialect used by Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Dialect in their novels is a helpful tool used to make their characters express themselves at ease. When choosing a certain dialect for a character, the authors are actually telling the reader more about that character’s background without directly stating anything.

It is a subconscious detail that readers sometimes rarely noticed if they are caught up in the book. Moreover the understanding of a particular dialect requires that the reader understands the stereotypes based upon a mixture of personal experience and a conventional set of structures taken from other authors literary representations of dialect.

Robin Carr mentions the use of dialect in children’s books. For him the function is to suggest the geographical background, social class, educational level, and intelligence of literary characters. People and especially young readers develop negative attitudes about characters who speak non-standard dialects and that these attitudes are intensified if the readers themselves speak a non-standard dialect.

These negative attitudes are partially due to the literary use of ‘eye dialect’, where the author misspells words to convey variant speech patterns. To children, spelling errors reflect low intelligence or indesirability in the character...Dialect divides people into classes.( Robin Carr,1978).

A good example could be when Nelly hums a primitive Danish-Scots ballad above the sleeping orphan, Hareton:

It was far in the night, and the bairnies grat, The mither beneath the mools heard that. ( Wuthering Heights, 76).

Hence, social meaning transmitted with the help of the Brontës’ style, switching or other sociolinguistic devices is due to the sociolinguistic choices that are able to inform the reader about the speaker ’s social and regional origin as well as the nature of the social situation in question and about shifts in the topic of the conversation. Concerning Jane Eyre, these shifts are from Standard English to French and sometimes to other languages, whereas in Wuthering Heights, the major switch is from Standard English to a local dialect . Situations are likely to be different in conversation since the topic of talk and the purpose in addition to the relationship of the interlocutors vis-à- vis each other are not limited; language cannot be the same in all interactions throughout the novel, where the characters are but fictional. Yet, the novel is only the reflection of the real world improved by the power of the writers’ imagination.

In my opinion, the poet or the novelist is the exceptional individual who may be historically ‘ representative in one crucial sense of the term’. Arguably, he is the only one who knows what he feels and what his intention is because the majority of realities cannot be mirrored and voiced in the same way as their author does. Yet, the Brontës’ writing is characterised by the extraordinary ‘coherence’ 8 and power with which it gives shape to a historically determined view

8 Strickland used the term ‘coherence’ when he mentioned the great works of Literature, Racine’ s Phaedra or Malraux’ s La Condition Humaine.

of the world held by a particular social group: the group of nineteenth - century working class and middle - class in a particular place in the North of England. We shall see if this writing reveals exactly the structures of the religious, economic, social and cultural life of this part of the world during that time.

1.4. Conclusion

Now , there is a considerable need for studying language in relation to social and cultural contexts and this leads to people ’s understanding and appreciating literary language . Moreover, switches from one language to another or to another variety occur not only in face-to-face interactions but also in any genre and any kind of literature . How words carry strong meanings in any piece of writing may reveal the organisation of a whole society! This is truly valid for the present study which attempts to consider the Brontës as a whole.

Indeed, dialect representation of this kind of literature is just a different linguistic variety distinguished from Standard English by features of any part of the linguistic structure: phonology, morphology or syntax. We all agree that a geographic dialectal difference between the Yorkshire dialect and Standard English is smaller than that of slang compared to language since the former makes use of certain kinds of codes known only by the members of the group. Arguably, one may notice that this mixture of different codes and uses among the linguistic choices does not only exist within the Brontës’ writing; just consider the speech of many of the heroes of Mark Twain’s

novels. Concerning our study, dialect refers to the everyday speech of the ordinary people of Haworth in the West Yorkshire.

Chapter Two Literature Review on code-switching

2.1. INTRODUCTION.

The aim in this chapter is to do an analysis and description of some definitions of code-switching, the inevitable result of bilingualism , both at the level of two different languages and different varieties of the same language . One may wonder about a writer’s faithfulness to render words or ideas when he/she has to translate a conversation from a regional dialect to Standard English . It would perhaps be, as Catford (1974:34) defines it, ‘ an operation performed on languages : a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another .’

On these matters, we are not willing to explain or even to do an exact study of translation processes nor do we have to speak of a linguistic theory of translation . We shall just say how and why the Brontës render and change a manifestation of spoken language in the writing medium , where the performer is a speaker and his addressee a hearer - to a second type of manifestation of language - where the performer is a writer and his addressee a reader .

The kind of linguistic behaviour involved in both novels, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre by the Brontës, i.e. borrowing or shifting or code-switching among the various codes - is not limited to multilinguals but is also practised by monolinguals who shift from

style to style or level to level . Hymes (quoted in G. Sankoff, 1971:33) puts it as follows :

Cases of bilingualism par excellence...are salient special cases of the general phenomena of variety in code repertoire and switching among codes. No normal person, and no normal community, is limited in repertoire to a single variety of code.... and according to Gumperz 9, ‘ In many multilingual societies the choice of one language over another has the same signification as the selection among lexical alternates in linguistically homogeneous societies.’

Both quotations show that bilingual (or multilingual) speakers as well as monolingual ones do code-switch, the former between languages, the latter within language(s). Both statements point out the fact that in every speech community there exist varieties in repertoires, or registers that have social implications. When choosing or shifting from one language to another, Charlotte Brontë shows what Sankoff calls ‘social meaning’. What comes out quite conspicuously is that the switching is easily identifiable between separate languages; the speakers of any community share rules of language usage which help them ‘interpret the social meaning of alternate linguistic choices’. (Sankoff 1971:35)

9 Quoted in Sankoff , 1971 : 34 .

In Jane Eyre we can find recurrent switching. Yet, this does not display the characteristics of a continuum since there is no creole or low variety versus Standard language in this kind of writing, but only a totally different language i.e. French versus English . Within the frame of French, Charlotte Brontë once more lets her character Adèle switch from one language to another according to the sorts of factors which influence her speech behaviour, i.e. factors such as: ‘participants, topic, setting or context, channel, message form, mood or tone, and intentions and effects’, to use Jakobson's list (1960) and Hymes' (1962).10 It is obvious that Charlotte Brontë's use of the two languages does carry social meaning. The use of the French language represents an ethnic identity marker with the French people, and shows that Adèle considers herself a part of the local community and is accepted as such.

She is also a valuable link with the modern, outside world in using French. She keeps in touch with the English community when using English and also keeps distance from it when she shifts to any use of the French language. In this chapter, we shall see briefly what is meant by code-switching as opposed to borrowing.

10 Both of them are quoted in Sankoff 1971 :35 .

2.2 André Martinet's view applied to the Brontë's writing.

Martinet (1989) stresses the fact that no linguistic community is homogeneous and ‘hardly ever self-contained’11. Dialectologists have shown the permeability of linguistic cells, and language contacts ‘have been shown to spread like waves through space". Martinet adds that "linguistic diversity begins next door, nay, at home and within one and the same man!" . He compares each individual to a ‘battle- field for conflicting linguistic types and habits’; each individual is at the same time a permanent source of linguistic interference. What we call the French language when we examine the Brontës’ writing is according to Martinet "the aggregate of millions of such microcosms" and the question is whether they should be grouped into other languages or not. This aggregate of microcosms are those alternated idiolects, dialects, sexlects, agelects, sociolects used by the different characters, each one being faithful to his/her own role and to particular situations throughout the two narratives.

Emily Brontë possesses that ‘linguistic allegiance’ which dictates the responses of every individual. Martinet talks of a certain ‘cement’ which holds each one of our ‘ languages’ together. There is no sign of ‘bilingualism’ in the case of an English writer using alternately Standard English and his own local dialect because, and following Martinet, there should be no linguistic allegiance to the latter while Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is evincing much bilingualism because the author uses Standard French as well as her own mother tongue. Moreover, the characters adapt their speech to

11 Weinreich , 1974 : vii .

circumstances and may change it accordingly from one interlocutor to another. When Joseph uses his spoken words in conversation they are very different from the written terms. Yet, the writer manages to drop this demarcation line by putting the speech into a written form; and then it emerges as a piece of considered writing . On the other hand , sometimes Charlotte Bronte shifts from one language to another, i.e. from English to French and other times from standard English to a Northern regional dialect . The language used by Adèle - the little girl just coming from France where she was born – is the best to illustrate this instance . Here’ the writer’s concern is not to ask for equivalents when she reports any conversation. She probably makes the English reader more or less confused , because of the lack of meaning since Dostert 12 defines translation as:

That branch of the applied science of language which is specifically concerned with the problem - or the fact – of the transference of meaning from one set of patterned symbols .. into another set of patterned symbols …

Martinet 13 takes as an example the shift from English to Russian and mentions that in English we make use of a different system; what changes is not our choice among ‘lexical riches and expressive resources’ which the language puts at our disposal. However, the move from Russian to English for instance is a move from one "totally homogeneous system" to another. This is what, he thinks, would happen in an "ideal bilingual situation." This is also the case of the writing of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë .

12 ( 1955 : 125 ) quoted in Catford , 1974 :35 . 13 Quoted in Weinreich , 1974 : viii .

Imagine a speaker shifting from English to Russian . Hence, he has to leave aside one totally homogeneous system and make use of another one. For example, when it is about the semantemes 'foot' and 'leg' as Weinreich (1974:8) explains :

Russian has no identical opposition; instead, it divides approximately the same content into three semantemes : 'nóZka' (furniture leg), 'nogá' (entire animal leg), and 'fut' (12-inch lenght). Thus, the semantemes in each language are differently defined.

Whether Charlotte Brontë is that "ideal bilingual" or not is not the question. What is certain is that she manages to live this situation in Jane Eyre by shifting to the other language, into the language of writing and sometimes shifting to a Yorkshire dialect into the language of writing.14. Although shifting from one style to another, her two linguistic mediums are distinct for her. But what about her non- native reader since the problem is that learning a foreign language does not imply knowing about the different dialects that exist within that same language.And what about the difficulties encountered by speakers of English faced with French when they ignore all of it ?

According to Martinet- who wonders about who knows all of "his" language - "it will often be easier to understand the foreigner inquiring about the station than to follow the discussion of two local

14 in Jane Eyre Adèle speaks French when addressing her nurse for example because she grew up in France. e.g.: « Revenez bientôt , ma bonne amie, ma chère Mlle Jeannette . »

technicians ” (quoted in Weinreich, 1974 : viii). It should be pointed out that perhaps the foreign reader is going to have no real problem when listening to any of Charlotte Brontë's characters thanks to the context. Martinet (quoted in Weinreich, 1974 : viii) also gives the example of two speakers who meet for the first time. Each one uses his own dialect mutually unintelligible. They may, in a very few days, find out the clues to avoid impeded intercourse. Each of them is going to learn quickly how to communicate although their two linguistic mediums have no "genetic" ties or "synchronic resemblances."One vivid example from the Brontë’s writing would be : “Oh ciel ! Que c’est beau!”15 This is given as just one example from the numerous conversations between Jane and her pupil Adèle. As far as Mrs Fairfax is concerned ,she could guess bits of Adèle’s discourse which is somehow related to English but the two languages do not belong to the same sub-family. This language and English are genetically related ;however they are not sisters.

2.3.1. Weinreich's view applied to the Brontës.

Weinreich(1974:1) claims that "it would be an oversimplification to speak of borrowing". He prefers to use the term "interference" for any deviation from the norms of either language when a bilingual shows the result of his familiarity with the two languages. The example of the term ‘diablerie’ used in Jane Eyre shows a deviation from French to English. In addition titles like ‘Signior’Eduardo and ‘Donna’ Bianca are added to the system.

15 « O heavens !How beautiful it is!”

This may involve many consequences since the concept of the English language would be ruined by that of the French language. "Diablerie"16 can only be a sort of borrowing but not a switch if we consider that it had been phonologically adapted to the English language.

Just like the French expression ‘par parenthèse’17. In fact, the sound [p] may be regarded as borrowing if we consider the phonological adaptation to the English language. In the word ‘par’, it will be aspirated and followed by the long vowel [a:] . One will also hear the aspiration at the beginning of the word ‘parenthèse’; instead of being dental [t] is going to be alveolar because that is the rule in the phonological system of the English language .

2.3.2. Phonic interference in relation to the Brontës's writing;

Weinreich (1974:14) states that:

The problem of phonic interference concerns the manner in which a speaker perceives and reproduces the sound of one language, which might be designated secondary, in terms of another, to be called primary.

A phoneme of the secondary system is identified with one in the primary system. In the Brontës's writing, the primary system would be Englih and the secondary French . Its phonetic rules are applied to that phoneme. An English character in Jane Eyre , who

16 In Jane Eyre chapter 19 ‘diablerie ‘:devilry ,wicked conduct. 17 Op cit chapter 12 ‘par parenthèse’ :by the way.

knows English and only hears and borrows some French terms would identify the sound [p] non aspirated with the sound [p ] aspirated. Thus he would pronounce the word with an odd accent ; yet, the meaning will not be affected since both sounds are just different realisations of the same one phoneme . Every French word is moulded in conformity with the structure of the borrowing language. One may notice the disappearance of the [r] after the [a] in ‘par’. It is substituted by the long vowel (a:).English people try to make efforts in pronouncing ‘par’ in order to make or mark the difference between both languages. However the impact of the mother tongue is so strong that it leaves no space to any intruder although when they borrow, people try to pronounce the French words as correctly as possible.

Speakers will confound the aspirated sounds with the more familiar non aspirated ones. Lack of aspiration where it is required is one main feature which distinguishes someone who has studied French from another who has not. Weinreich (1974:18) discerns four basic types of interference:

Under-differenciation of phonemes, Over-differenciation of phonemes, Reinterpretation of distinctions, Actual phone substitution.

He talks of under-differenciation of phonemes when "two sounds of the secondary system whose counterparts are not distinguished in the primary system are confused". (Weinreich 1974 : 18) . An extraneous phonemic length is an example of over-

differenciation of phonemes, i.e. the French reader might not understand this form of speech, a speech distorted by a substitute sound system. The word is borrowed from French into English ; it is received by the "ear route" like ‘Stamboul’ for ‘Istanbul but Charlotte Brontë puts it down on the printed sheet in chapter 24 of her novel.

2.3.3. Grammatical Interference. Weinreich (1974: 29) states that the problem of grammatical interference is very complex although it is one of the most debated questions in general linguistics. Meillet says [ quoted in Weinreich ( 1974:29)] that "the grammatical systems of two languages... are impenetrable to each other". This fact is stressed by Sapir in affirmation that "nowhere do we find any but superficial morphological interinfluencings" (quoted in Weinreich (1974:29). However, Schuchardt ((quoted in Weinreich 1974:29) does not agree by stating that "even closely knit structures, like inflectional endings are not secure against invasion by foreign material”. Contradictory views have been defended by scholars because of lack of agreement between them on fundamental concepts, according to Weinreich.

2.3.4. Mixed Language.

We notice that there is no clear demarcation between morphology and syntax, grammar and lexicon and that "there is no limit in principle to the influence which one morphological system may have upon another" (Weinreich 1974 : 18). Following this path, one can add that there is no rule to be followed if we consider the two terms used in Dib’s writing ( La Trilogie) for example :

‘nouallas’ and ‘araguiats (respectively hats and “skull-caps”). For the former we notice a zero Arabic morpheme for the plural marker, i.e. the absence of [t] since the correct plural form would be [nualat] while for the latter, the Arabic morpheme exists . The Arabic plural marker exists in the pronunciation but the term adopts, in addition, the French plural marker [s] "araguiats".

If we consider that absence of [t] signifies singular while its presence signifies plural, we can assert that there is no clear-cut rule to be followed when borrowing. Is this phenomenon less obligatory when Arabic words are borrowed into a French discourse, or is it optional? However, a [t] morpheme at the end of the word "noualla" would have been a real Arabic plural ending. In this case, not only is the term "noualla" borrowed from Arabic into French, but so is the morpheme [s] borrowed from French into Arabic this time. So morphemes and grammatical relations belonging to one language can occur in another language as "borrowings". It is also possible here to speak of a transfer of a morpheme from a source language, i.e. French into Arabic "nouallas".

Weinreich (1974:31) claims that the transfer of morphemes such as inflectional endings in several European languages (whether of Latin, Germanic or Slavic origins) seems to be extremely rare. At first, they appear as bound morphemes, but after a thorough analysis they become "something else". In fact ,the term ‘houri’ used by Charlotte Brontë 18 in her novel does not follow any Arabic inflectional ending.

18 Houri : beautiful women in Islamic myths,the nymphs of Paradise.

2.4.1. Other views on borrowing and code-switching.

Many linguists have discussed code-switching and borrowing, for example, Pffaf (1979), Poplack (1980) Timm (1975). Bentahila and Davies, (1983)19 have examined the former in relation to Arabic and French in Morocco, more precisely the question of the syntax of intrasentential code-switching between Moroccan Arabic and French. Others think that it is "unworthy of study", to which for instance the sociologist Mazouni affixes the somewhat disparaging term ‘sabir’, a sort of French jargon for code-switching. One may point out that the use of the Brontës code-switching refers to their bilingual's ability to alternate their two languages. As regards this study, its aim is to attempt to show how non-linguistic variables, i.e. topic, participants, setting, have their impact on Emily and Charlotte Brontë’s language choice. This kind of code-switching nonetheless seems to be different from that of Blom and Gumperz (1972) or that of Fishman (1968). The former mention "situational switching" with structurally distinct codes and the latter stresses a systematically domain oriented code- switching.

2.4.2. Code-switching versus borrowing.

No clear agreement has been reached concerning the distinction between code-switching and borrowing. Some linguists believe that single words are indeed borrowings, but longer stretches of language involving more than single words constitute switches. They are spoken or written in the other language. Hence, the argument of those who defend the possibility of borrowing proverbs and

19 Quoted in Bouamrane, 1986

idiomatic expressions seems tenable. It could be said that Algerian people, for example, are code-switching when using "l'hôpital" (the hospital) while they are borrowing when using the phonologically adapted word ‘sbitar’. According to Reyes (1974), morphological adaptation of a word from one language to the other can distinguish borrowing from code-switching. Concerning the Brontës’ writing whether it is about single words or longer stretches of language both are considered as code- switching since nothing has been morphologically adapted to the English language.

Examplifying his argument, Reyes (1974) mentions English words morphologically adapted to Spanish which he calls "spontaneous borrowings" while those which are not adapted are named "incorporated borrowings." Following Reyes, the word ‘douars’ (North-African sort of hamlet or tiny village) would be placed among "spontaneous borrowings" when used in a French text. And the words ‘ghoul’ and ‘afreet’ in English used by Charlotte Brontë are ‘spontaneous borrowings’.

In order to determine whether a word - or a phrase or anything else - is a borrowing or a case of code-switching, we may consider the four questions suggested by Pfaff (1979:297) i.e.: (1) Does an L1 equivalent exist? (2) If so, is it also in use in the community? (3) Is the equivalent L1 term known to the individual speaker? (4) Does the individual regard the word as belonging to L1 or to L2?

On the other hand, one has just to think of the Algerian reader of English who comes across expressions like these: ‘onding on snaw’ :’about to snow’or ‘dunnut’: ‘don’t’or ‘munnit’: ‘mustn’t’ or ‘of a mak’ of their own’:of a kind of their own’ or ‘wor mich i’your way’:’was very much like you’ in the Yorkshire dialect or ‘tyne’ ‘lose’ in the Scots dialect.

When we consider all these dialect expressions one cannot say that an L1 equivalent exists and is in use in the Algerian community for instance. It is assumed that the term can easily be known if the individual reader is living in the Yorkshire while it could be unknown to any other reader even if the latter lives just in the South of England. The second individual is going to regard these words and expressions as an odd speech in his regional dialect or in Standard English . However this reader is somehow obliged to refer to the footnote for comprehension because he points to them as strange terms .Nevertheless,Emily or her sister do not always care about adding footnotes because for them it is taken for granted that their mother regional accent is logic and this reminds us of William Labov (1966) who stresses the logic of non- standard English in one of his famous articles.

Neither in Jane Eyre nor in Wuthering Heights are switches and borrowings footnoted . This might be an indication of what, in the Brontës' mind, constitutes code-switching .

2.5. Lexical monemes.

Any language is constituted by significant minimals: the monemes which are divided into two groups:

- lexical - grammatical The latter are limited in number, eg. pronouns, possessives, etc. This group will be ignored in this work since borrowing in the Brontes’writing concerns mainly the former. This phenomenon has already been explained by Martinet (quoted in Asselah, 1981:25) when affirming that new designations are necessary because of new needs of usages.

People in Haworth do not read newspapers in their regional dialect because it is not written ; and if they have any knowledge of it, it is only a passive one. This is shown in the conversations between Joseph and Hareton. The latter is able to understand several lexemes, but whether he can use them in his turn should not be taken for granted. "The process to obtain fragments of a new language can be studied in the psychology of language" (Weinreich, 1973:653).

The lexicon more than syntax varies in the same individual momentarily from a situation to another, from a language state to another. R.Galisson and D. Coste (quoted in Asselah 1981: 26) present the lexicon as constituted by virtual units, i.e. lexemes. When they are used in a discourse they become vocables that constitute a sample of the individual's lexicon. Thus they are of two different types: borrowing and tracing (calque).

2.4. Borrowing.

Borrowing is a linguistic phenomenon related to the history of the formation of a language (Asselah, 1981:26). No people can avoid contact with others during or via cultural, economic relations , wars or travelling as is the case of Adèle when she came to live in Mr Rochester‘s house. Martinet claims that borrowing appears at all levels of languages in contact and also at all degrees. In this case it can be defined as a usage in a language of a lexeme belonging to another language.

Galisson and Coste (quoted in Asselah, 1981:26) stress the fact that in borrowing the transfer is total, i.e both the signifier and the signified of the foreign sign - which is a lexeme - are preserved. The signified is the ‘ghoul’ itself, i.e. the object 20, whereas the signifier is the term ‘. If we use the term ‘ogre’ instead of ‘ghoul’ we would lose the function of the signified. The term ‘afreet’ is borrowed from Arabic into English in order to conserve both functions of the signified and the signifier. However the term ‘ogre’ would have kept only its function of signified but not that of signifier.

We may cite another view of Weinreich where he distinguished between two categories of borrowing, i.e borrowing by direct importation and borrowing by correspondence. Borrowing by direct importation is a phenomenon which consists of filling a gap by introducing in a language a lexeme of another language as it is or

20 Heathcliff is qualified as a ‘ghoul’ i.e. a unnatural being capable of destroying everything he meets. In stories it is a spirit that robs graves and feeds on the corpses in them. A person with gruesome and unnatural tastes and habits.

with a phonic transformation. Weinreich's example is the English word “bargain”. It is adapted to the French of Louisiana under the term “barguine”. Another example cited by Asselah is when the Spanish spoken in America overwhelms the gaps of English: "conscientious objectors" for "objectores conscientes" (Weinreich, 1973:665) (quoted in Asselah, 1981:27). In these two examples there is the direct introduction of L1 elements in order to fill the lexical gaps of L2.

For the second category of borrowing, i.e "borrowing by correspondence" (Asselah, 1981:27) the word Mohawk for "metal" is spread to the signified "silver" for the purpose of filling the mohawke gaps which the bilinguals feel when using the term "money".

This phenomenon consists of adapting words of one language to appropriate forms which exist in another language. On the other hand, the Spanish spoken in America overwhelms the gaps which appear in relation to English. Weinreich (1973:665) (quoted in Asselah,1981:28) gives the example of Nuevo-trato for "New-deal". He therefore considers that this kind of borrowing, i.e "by correspondence" is more accepted than the one "by direct implantation". This seems to be confirmed by Tabouret-Keller (1969:305) (quoted in Asselah, 1981:15) who states that “there is no limit in the expansion of any vocabulary when correspondings between lexical material and "signifieds" of another language are established.”

This could be the case of the Brontës' writing if we consider the following examples: - ‘drawing away’:approaching death (Yorkshire dialect) . - ‘carte blanche’: full permission(French).21

The word for word meaning is different from the real meaning of the expression since it is: approaching death. In this situation it is not a language versus another one but rather a dialect versus standard language.

2.6.1. Tracing (The calque).

Vinay (1973:740) (quoted in Asselah, 1981:27) claims that when we use "borrowing" we confess our inability on the level of lexicon, but when using "tracing" we simply reveal our incapacity to create the true term. He says that the compound nouns "cuiller à thé" (sic) and "cuiller de table"(sic) (teaspoon, table spoon) used in Canada are only means to facilitate communication. They correspond to "cuiller à café" and "cuiller à soupe" which already exist in French. Whether it is "perfect or approximate" tracing will consist of a combination of two or several significant units existing in one language on the model of another language.

Langacker (1973:180) speaks of "loan translation" which is the variant of lexical borrowing. His examples are "that goes without saying" and "gratte-ciel". The former is a literal translation from the

21 The two examples are taken from Jane Eyre ,chapter 34 .

French "ça va sans dire" and the latter is the "metaphor of scraping the sky" borrowed from English ‘sky-scraper’ which is itself a oan translation from German- by French speakers and Spanish speakers as well - to convey the idea of a very tall building. We get "gratte- ciel" in French and "rascacielos" in Spanish.

2.7. Lexical competence in the Brontës' writing.

The problem is that for Emily or Charlotte Bronte , they have to be in the characters‘ minds and also to know if not to enter into the deepest part of their backgrounds at different periods of their lives . In this case it is no more about a speaker’s background and a hearer, but it is rather question of a speaker acting for another speaker and a hearer performing for another hearer ; it seems very difficult for a reader to enter such complex domains .In addition , both the hearer and the speaker are just one person , the writer . Competence should not be taken in its Chomskyan sense here. It is rather Charlotte’s and Emily Bronte’s performance which has to be taken into consideration. According to Tabouret-Keller (1969:305 quoted in Asselah 1981:15), bilingualism is a general fact of all situations which lead to a spoken or written usage of two or more languages by the same individual or by a group of speakers (Tabouret-Keller, 1969:305) (quoted in Asselah, 1981:15). Language is taken in a very general sense, i.e. it can also be a dialect.

On the other hand, Martinet's (quoted in Asselah, 1981:15) assertion that a well-defined situation called "bilingualism"

- where the same individual masters two languages with the same perfection - does not exist. This linguist adds that the situation has nothing to do with the one where the individual speaks one or two "mother" languages. We cannot say that Charlotte Bronte has two "mother" tongues, i.e.English and French because she does not master both with the same ease; English is her mother tongue whereas French is a foreign language. However, it should be stressed that the really perfect, balanced bilingual does not exist. What is sure is that we cannot know all the proverbs of a foreign language - no mattter how well we know it - and it is even difficult indeed to know the meaning of all the proverbs which one hears in daily life.

Bilingualism can also be seen as the alternation of two languages (W.Mackey 1976:372) which would be the case of Jane Eyre where the writer shifts from French to English. This fact is stressed by Weinreich (1974:81, quoted in Asselah, 1981:15), who claims that bilinguals tend to specialize the use of each language according to the determined topic or interlocutor. Such seems to be Charlotte Bronte's case where she enables, for instance, a character, the nurse, to use Standard French alongside the use of English , according to the built-in situation or interlocutor within the frame of the narratives.

This bilingualism, or rather plurilingualism22, has consequences on the linguistic level and also on the psychological and pedagogical level (Skik, 1976:109). In this text, we witness then a situation of

22 The author of Jane Eyre used also German and some Italian expressions.

generalized interference between the many varieties - i.e English, French, German and Italian - not only at the spoken level but also at the written one . Interferences are at the same time direct, i.e. we have the presence in system A of elements belonging to system B, and interferences may also be indirect, when there is a difficulty in acquiring a phoneme of system A because of its absence in system B. Let us cite this example from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: In the term ‘ghoul’ where the phoneme / / is substituted by the phoneme /g/ because the former does not exist in the inventory of the English language. This example could suffice as it amply reveals the differences between the consonants of Arabic and those of English and the difficulty to acquire a phoneme of system A because of its absence in system B is obvious.

To conclude on errors in pronunciation, we can say that if we consider the real production of the consonants and vowels of each language, we shall see that the borrowed words are never faithfully transcribed from one language (Arabic) to another (English), and vice versa.

The annexion, for instance, of ‘sotto voce’ meaning ‘in a low voice’ to the the narrative denotes a certain result from the influence in speech on the part of Italian people who were living in England. Charlotte Brontë became familiar with the term and used it in her novel.It has until now remained a "well-established" word of the English language. Langacker (1973:180) claims that:

If the word ‘patio’ had not existed in Spanish, or if English speakers had never had contact with it, it would not have become part of English.

Following Langacker, we may add that borrowing is a very common phenomenon and that no language is completely free of borrowed forms. The obvious cause of lexical borrowing is the need to find terms for new concepts, new objects and places. It would be more difficult to make words up instead of borrowing those already existing in another language. But some languages borrow more than others.

However, the most acute kind of borrowing or code swiching during that period (1847) was from French to English. French loanwords invaded the English dialects. French represented an upper class and people were led to use French words in their conversation. This practice increased in time because of the air of prestige that accompanied it. Yet, this natural phenomenon had to be considered as "alarming", because some people tend to consider most, if not all the loan-words as belonging to their mother tongue.

This is perhaps due to some effects mentioned above. When English people used loan-words in their conversation, these words were made to fit the phonological system of the host language, the English language and dialects .One vivid example would be the presence of aspiration in the initial position of the plosives /p/,/t/,/k/ or the place of articulation involved when trying to pronounce a dental /t/ as in the word ‘la table’. It is also worth mentioning the case of non-nasalized vowels for the French nasalized ones.

Yet, speakers do not always completely assimilate their borrowings to the host language. As Langacker (1973:180) puts it so elegantly:

The same people who sprinkle their speech with French words for purposes of prestige may very well, for the same reason, attempt to preserve the French pronunciation.

It is difficult for some people to distinguish between borrowing and code-switching in a written text if there are no clues, for example, words written in italics or between inverted commas, or glossed in footnotes. We may also imagine that when speakers borrow terms like "viejo" from Spanish, the risk of substituting one phoneme for another will decrease since the Arabic /x/ as in "khamas" and the spanish /x/ like in ‘viejo’ are produced with the same sound.

2.8. The use of French by the Brontës and Code-switching.

"By school formation" the Brontë sisters were led naturally and without difficulty to write in French. Especially Charlotte who studied that ‘prestigious’language .On this concern Barty Knight(1995:51) writes:

Charlotte Brontë was thirty when she started writing Jane Eyre. She had experience of English country life, especially in the north of England ,of boarding schools, educational practice and the work of a governess. She was well educated in the few subjects then available to young women, and in her case this included excellent French .

In fact, had Charlotte Brontë gone to Russia she would have then shifted to the Russian language in her writing . This language choice is fortuitous and thus arbitrary. Moreover, in using also and mostly her Standard English , she avoids the thorny problem of regionalism . Shifting from English to French could be ‘ the ideal vehicle of a thought that seeks through local realities to join the universal preoccupations of our era’, as Déjeux (1980:11ff) says. 23

Hence the Brontës consider French as the ideal medium that tries to get in touch with the universal preoccupations and they also do not see any problem in using the French language. Besides, with this language these writers are sure they will get more meaning .They have no prejudice or hostile feeling towards French as a tool for work ; it only shows that it reflects all the consequences if not the advantages of bilingualism.

2.9. What is bilingualism?

When reading Jane Eyre one understands that the author is bilingual. In fact, Charlotte speaks French and she writes it. Her novel is a kind of writing in which the two languages are practised. In addition, another parallel can be made between Standard English and a regional dialect of the Yorkshire. The causes must be found in the geography and history of the country, i.e. an area of contact, invasions and movement of the population . In all cases, domination,

23 My translation of Déjeux’s French text concerning Dib’s writing: « c’est le véhicule idéal d’ une pensée qui cherche à travers les réalités locales à rejoindre les préoccupations universelles de notre époque… »

prestige, exchange of influence can be explained by the political, economic and social history of the area in question.

Sometimes it is also the ideological representation of a given language, such as superiority, universality, clarity and function: the French language during the period 1842-1848, i.e. the years during which the two novels were written. Indeed, in these narratives the relation between the two languages is fundamentally unequal since both Emily and Charlotte Brontë shift from English to French or from Standard English to regional dialects only when they make their characters speak. On the other hand, when they describe a scenery or when they meditate on a serious matter they use English. We can also see this situation as a form of diglossia, whereby H (Standard French) and L (regional dialect) are used for different purposes. Thus, bilingualism here can be approached from a social and cultural perspective.

Sociolinguistics is interested not only in the reactions of the bilingual speaker as an individual but also in the attention given to the social influences that affect the bilingual's behaviour and the social repercussions. This state of affairs can involve conflicts of values, allegiances and adjustments to the bicultural demands. Until now, the bilingual situation in Algeria for example is still debated . Two mother tongues coexist: Algerian Arabic and Tamazight. We now witness three separate languages in literature for example, on the national scene: modern or standard Arabic, Tamazight and French. 24 More intricate even, official Arabic

24 Tamazight is taught at schools and Universities.

(standard variety) is clearly opposed to French, as in a conflictual stance.

My aim is to focus on the use of the three different ‘languages’ by the Brontës and their speech community, i.e. language use at the micro-sociolinguistic level (or individual speaker's level) and at the same time the macrolinguistic level is involved since the former clearly symbolizes the latter . Let us then see to what extent we can apply certain definitions of bilingualism to the situation in the Brontës’ writings.

2.10. Einar Haugen's definition.

Haugen claims that bilingualism is the ability to produce "complete meaningful utterances in the other language." These utterances are to be complete. It is taken for granted that a human being is capable of producing an endless number of utterances, but each language restricts the number of utterances which a person should produce. Moreover, these utterances are to be meaningful, that is understood by other persons who use a given language, especially by native-speakers. An English bilingual who reads Wuthering Heights and finds those idiomatic expressions, proverbs and songs taken from the Yorkshire dialect would perhaps understand what they mean. In addition, another English bilingual who reads in Jane Eyre a number of utterances taken from French would also get their meaning .

On the other hand, the ‘monolingual’25 reader is not going to read "complete meaningful utterances" since they are meaningful only for those who are capable of translating them back into English. To clarify Haugen's definition, we may cite idioms for instance used in certain languages and which are not understood by bilinguals. These idioms are meaningful and bilinguals are able to produce them, since they are supposed to know this language, but they still do not understand them. For example, there are Algerians who know English but do not understand idioms frequently used by the English people. We may also mention the case of any Algerian who produces "complete meaningful utterances" in Standard Arabic without understanding them, for example verses from the Koran. Thus he can recite excerpts from the Koran without understanding them, since he has not been taught their meaning.

Therefore, Haugen's definition perhaps needs completion : complete meaningful utterances in the other language that can be understood both by the hearer and the speaker. The conclusion that we can draw in relation to the writing of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre is that even an English speaker (not from the region of Haworth ) may read complete meaningful utterances without understanding their real meaning. This is illustrated in the following statements from the local dialect as Jane herself says:

25 By ‘monolingual ‘ I do not mean the monolingual in the real sense of the term but just a speaker who understands neither French nor the regional dialect used in both novels.

“that caps the globe” :’that’s the giddy limit’ or ‘that beats everything’ “i’ his een”: ‘in his eyes’.

2.10.1 W.F. Mackey's definition.

Mackey defines this phenomenon as "...the alternate use of two or more languages by the same individual." The Brontës are able to use the two languages alternately as the situation requires. They went through the French system of education and their mother tongue. These writers use the languages already mentioned according to a certain situation and a certain purpose. They can use French correctly, then switch to English , depending on the situation, the interlocutor and the hearer. For this reason, some linguists think that even a "monolingual" can be affected by a diglossic situation.

This Linguistic behaviour is not specific or limited to bilinguals. It is also valid for monolinguals who shift from style to style (Sankoff, 1971 : 33). Hymes (quoted in Sankoff, 1971:33) asserts that “no normal person, and no normal community, is limited in repertoire to a single variety of code”... Like Hymes, Gumperz (quoted in Sankoff, 1971:34) makes the point that in every speech community there exists a variety of repertoires, of alternate means of expression. This leads to social implications. When a speaker chooses a code, he indicates what might be called social meaning. Hence ,Emily Brontë shifts from Standard English to a local variety when she makes for instance one of her characters speak his own

dialect ,his own idiolect ; in fact Joseph uses his regional accent when he wants to communicate with either Catherine or Heathcliff because the writer would like to indicate a certain social meaning that cannot be shown or marked through the use of Standard English.

2.11. The Didactic language.

Another kind of linguistic means is present in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre : a didactic language . It is shown in different situations .The word ‘didactic’ concerns parts of the novels which offer a message . Emily Brontë had important things to say and her religious language and premonitory dreams or visions are capable of symbolizing realities like the nature of love ; this is closely connected to a sense of justice and moral awareness hence , the good are rewarded and the evil punished and damned for ever. One illustration could be Hareton and the young Cathy for the former whereas for the latter the ‘couple’ Heathcliff and Catherine would be sufficient . Only good characters triumph to convey the mood of calm and restitution and reconciliation when everything is destroyed.

In addition, the purpose of quotations from the Old Testament is intended to show how religion affected people in both novels .Yet, the authors do not forget to reveal the hypocrite side with the help of the description of the moral or physical appearance of the following characters ,the so-called religious men : Joseph and Mr Brocklehurst respectively in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre .

Moreover , Jane’s statement on ‘women’s rights’ is probably Charlotte Brontë’s. Knight (1995:19) asserts that : Although comfortably settled she is often restless and stirred by a desire more rigorous and inspiring . She is convinced that women need action and fulfilment no less than men .

Another example would be that of Nelly Dean trying to give Mr Lockwood lessons of wisdom . Yet, the most pertinent is that of Joseph preaching his religious beliefs.

We may say that in these conversations language is like a patchwork. The reader witnesses the "elaboration of a language" by the characters in contact with one another or two people confessing some secrets in the absence of the other. Every sociolinguistic aspect in this kind of writing is carefully respected .Even those numerous shifts are the results of either bilingual or diglossic situations. For the purpose of this dissertation I have then used borrowing to mean something different from that of code-switching.

My own definition of borrowing as regards this humble study would be that this phenomenon is characterized by any presence of intrusive French , German , Italian or Latin loan-words into the "English" used by the Brontes . On the other hand, any shift from English to French or from Standard English to any local dialect ( including slang ) is code-switching. By code-switching is understood any character’s speech, idiomatic expressions, proverbs, songs and kinship words . In reality one cannot consider that the characters are the only responsible of the rate , manner and

delivery of these different speeches since the warned reader is aware of the very strong brain behind everything . However, we can also consider this fact as belonging to the whole community .

Concerning borrowing the substitutions (changes in pronunciation) are felt by any one who reads these novels . Thus it seems that these borrowed words are adapted phonologically to the English language, some of them being already part and parcel of the English lexicon: ‘afreet’, ‘houri’,’ghoul’. As a conclusion, it is tempting to say that any foreign word coming into English is a borrowing while any shift from English to another language or from standard to non- standard is code-switching .

In the Brontës’ writing different languages and different cultures are in contact with one another . Like some other English natives, the Brontës have the ability to master standard English and the dialect of their home town. Obviously, this shows the concept of bidialectism when these writers have command of two different dialects.

2.12. Conclusion.

In this chapter I have tried to mention, though briefly, some views on borrowing and code-switching. There are specific events and relations which lead the performer to produce this particular kind of language . Some linguists make a clear distinction between the concepts whereas some others do not. One feature is nevertheless common to the majority of the different argumentations;

it is the fact that the phenomena of code-switching and borrowing are the only realities that co-exist in any linguistic situation and in my opinion the idea of a pure language is but a utopia.When Edward Fitzgerald ( 1809-1883) translated Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (12th century) he unconsciously borrowed the words ‘Ferrash’ And ‘Saki’ because these functions do not exist in the English culture; ‘Farrash’ is the servant who takes down a tent whereas ‘saki’ the one who passes the wine. However our concern is on how often the Brontës shift from Standard English to the Yorkshire dialect and also to other languages such as French, or other varieties like local dialect and slang.

Chapter three Code-Switching in the Brontës’ novels

3.1. Introduction

Linguists find it difficult to define exactly these ‘abstractions’ : language , a language and a dialect or at least to put a line of demarcation between the three . ‘Language is a purely human activity ‘ , Edward Sapir (1967) says , ‘ and non- instinctive method of communicating ideas , emotions and desires .’ He adds that:‘ it is a system of vocal symbols which permits people in a given culture to communicate ‘ . Language is a means of communication between human beings and it is not easy at all even to express the real message one would like to transmit because a speaker and a hearer are but two totally different individuals at the time of the utterance of one message .

Undoubtedly , only human beings have the power to master this situation at an early age. Yet , the social environment is very important to determine anyone’s language . So language is not determined by biological heredity but depends on the cultural environment . Language is seen in terms of langue / parole by the father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure ( 1916 ) . He claims that language can be also described in terms of the dichotomy: signifier /signified. For the same contrast, Noam Chomsky , used competence/ performance as another definition of language. The former is invisible , abstract and social i.e. structure, whereas the latter is visible , concrete and individual i.e. speech which can itself be an idiolect or a dialect. Chambers and Trudgill (1988 : 3 ) define first , a dialect as a substandard , low status , often rustic form of language , generally

associated with the peasantry , the working class, or other groups lacking in prestige .

However , both linguists accept that the notion of Standard English - for example- is ‘ just as much a dialect as any other form of English ’ . So , any one dialect is in no way linguistically superior to any other . Secondly , they add that ‘ a language is a collection of more or less mutually intelligible dialects ’; this definition shows clearly that dialects are subparts of a language . Yet , there are difficulties with the criterion of mutual intelligibity .

The characterisation of ‘ language ’ and ‘ dialect ’ is still debated . One would see Danish as less than a language while German could be considered as more than a language in the following situations : on the one hand , Norwegian , Swedish and Danish are three languages that are mutually intelligible and on the other hand one has just to consider German to be a single language , though , ‘ there are some types of German which are not intelligible to speakers of other types ,’ as stated by Chamber and Trudgill ( 1988:3).

Linguists are still faced with the problem of how they can distinguish between a language and a dialect , not to mention the thorny question about how they can decide what a language is . According to Chamber and Trudgill (1966:4) a study was carried out in Africa ; it demonstrated that one tribe A claimed to understand the language of another tribe B . However the latter claimed not to be able to understand language A . Tribe

A was larger and more powerful than tribe B .Thus on the ground that they are really the same people and spoke the same language group A wanted to incorporate group B ‘s territory into their own . Obviously , ‘ group B’s failure to comprehend group A’s language was part of their resistance to this attempted takeover .’

So , even at the level of any individual , I think , we may find this problem of lack of intelligibily since the speech habits of a single person at a given time constitutes an idiolect ; the totality of all the idiolects used by the same speech commmunity is considered as a dialect : for instance , the local dialect used in Haworth in the Yorkshire in the North of England .26 Thus a dialect may be defined as the speech habits of some group of people at a given time and no ‘dialect ’ is really exempt of loan-words from other sources falling into the target ‘language’.

As stated by Langacker (1973:181) the paths of lexical borrowing reflect to a certain extent the paths of cultural influence . 27A large proportion of the Arabic words are used in the English language like ‘zero’ , ‘cipher’ ,‘zenith’ , ‘alchemy’ ‘algebra’ ….They came to English through Spanish to ‘ attest the Arabic influence in mathematics and science during the early medieval period .

26 Here we have to stress the fact that the temporal situation of a dialect is as important as the geographical one .

27 One of the best examples would be the case of Algerian people in the period of colonisation and their use of that splendid phenomenon.

On the other hand , after the Norman conquest of England , great numbers of loan words came to English from French in such areas as government , the military institution , law , and religion .28 Moreover , Latin and Greek had great prestige in the world of scholarship during the Middle Ages . Consequently , words from Latin and Greek have been finding their way into English (often through French ) and to other European languages ever since the Renaissance (Langacker , 1973 : 183 ) One has only to consider these common English words starting with the Latin morpheme ‘ex ’ meaning ‘ out of , from ‘ : exact , exterminate , ex-wife , extract .

The able / ible suffix of Latin origin , added to native roots such as : answerable , laughable …

3.2. The use of a Yorkshire dialect

When we consider Emily and Charlotte Brontë ‘s novels Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre , we notice the use of the local dialect for the principal characters . However , literature assumed just ‘ heroes , heroines and sentimental scenes needed educated English ’. 29 It is essential to retain the ‘ shades ’ between dialect and elegant diction and to express life with which the authors are familiar . Moreover in Shakespeare one hears ‘ the

28 Some examples for governmental terms : crown , power , state , reign … for military matters : battle , army , vessel , navy …. Legal vocabulary : jury , judge , crime , property … Terms of religious and moral significance : pray , preach , angel ,sermon … (quoted from Langacker , 1973:182 )

29 G.D.Leavis quoted in George Eliot , 1985 : 245 .

very accent of living men ’ since each character is using his or her own language just like narrators and characters in the Brontës’ writing.

We may find objectors to the dialect , used - let us say - by Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights , and a conception of dialect as being provincial thus vulgar . This could be wrong since dialects retain forms of what was once pure English . Because : From a strictly linguistic point of view , what are customarily regarded as ‘ languages ‘ ( standard Latin, English , French , etc. ) are merely ‘ dialects ‘ which by historical ‘ accident ’ have become politically or culturally important . 30

Hence this language has its origins in the dialect spoken by the socially and economically dominant classes . The best example I think is that of l’Ile de France, in Paris , which by a social phenomenon became standard French , because its users were powerful and had more prestige than the speakers of the other dialects co-existing in France .

In fact, in the Brontës’ day most of the inhabitants of Haworth were dialect speakers; and since Charlotte Brontë complained that there was not a single ‘educated’ family in the place, it is likely that the ‘maisters’ – the mill owners, gentlemen farmers, and independent craftsmen- used at least some dialect forms as well as broad northern vowels, especially when speaking to their employees. The well-educated and the well-travelled are portrayed as equally fluent and forcible in dialect, ‘standard’ English, and French, but they were

30 John Lyons , 1968 : 34 -5 )

probably unusual in keeping the two English forms distinct. Within Haworth Parsonage, the dialect of the faithful servant Tabitha Aykroyd, born and brought up in Yorkshire, was familiar from an early age, and it was faithfully recorded in the speech of Hannah in Jane Eyre. And here nobody can deny the impact of the Brontës’ social and cultural backgrounds on their writing. Branwell Brontë probably heard more freely spoken dialect than his sisters. He and Charlotte used vigorous, fluent, dialect speech to characterize the servants and cronies of their Angrian ‘great men’.

The ‘strong twang’ of General Thornton is used both for comic purposes and to indicate his honesty. The Brontës would be alert to the pronunciation and nuances of the local dialect partly because their own speech, influenced by their Irish father, Cornish mother and aunt, and the various teachers in their schools, was different: Mary Tailor recorded that when Charlotte first arrived at Roe Head School she ‘spoke with a strong Irish accent’. In Jane Eyre too, Jane and the ‘coarsely-clad little peasants’ who are her scholars at Morton at first ‘ have a difficulty in understanding each other’s language’.

Emily was intrigued by Tabby’s Yorkshire version of ‘peel a potato’, and sought to write it down phonetically ‘pillapatate’. She would later represent with a high degree of phonetic accuracy the dialect speakers in Wuthering Heights. Yorkshire people would consider that the Brontë sisters spoke ‘less gruff than we talk here, and softer’, as Ellen Dean remarked of Edgar Linton in Wuthering Heights, a novel in which speech differences have a strong influence on personal relationships. The surly ‘gruff’ servant Joseph,

a broad dialect speaker, resents the refined speech of the Lintons, and affects not to understand Isabella’s request to accompany her to the house: ‘Mim! mim! mim! Did iver Christian body hear owt like it? Minching un’ munching! Hah can aw tell whet ye say?’ He says he cannot understand what Isabella’ speech and he is quite sure that ‘Christian body’ should speak like him.

Thus in the Brontës’ novels dialect reinforces character, helps to mark the class divide, and enhances the impression of real locality. It is never a mere ornament, a conventional device to provide local colour, or a stock source of comedy, as it often was in stage dramas. The Brontës used dialect in the way Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, and Maria Edgeworth used it, as an integral part of their novels. For Scott, dialect speakers exemplified one aspect of the ancient traditions and ‘manners belonging to an early period of society’ hardly known to English readers. Dandy Dinmont in Guy de Maupassant brings to life the speech and habits of farmers in a ’wild country, at a time when it was totally inaccessible’ except to a traveller on foot or horseback. The dialect-speaking farm-servants of Wuthering Heights, inhabiting a similar wild isolation, proved to be equally strange to English urban readers and reviewers.

The Brontës also knew and admired the writing of James Hogg. The vigorous dialect of the servants, the gaoler, and others in Hogg’s private memoirs and confessions of a Justified Sinner, and its function of part of a choric commentary on the tense drama of the main events, would encourage the Brontës to follow him. They would recognize the close kinship of Scottish and Yorkshire dialect, in for example the maid’s testimony at Bell Calvert’s trial: ‘Na, na, I

wadna swear to ony siller spoons that ever war made …lay them by, lay them by, an’ gie the poor woman her spoons again.’ Charlotte Brontë also loved and often quoted Scottish ballads. Some echoes of Irish speech may be detected because of human influences ‘there can be no doubt, her father was the most lasting’. This is also true for Emily Brontë whose whole life has been deeply influenced by not only this devoted father but also the landscape of her home at Haworth which had the ‘greatest effect in quickening her mind and in shaping her character’, as confirmed by Winifred Gérin.(1971:2)

Mr Brontë had used an approximation of Irish pronunciation for some words spoken by Nanny in The Maid of Killarney, and the Brontës probably knew Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800) with its gossiping newsmonger and dialect speaker Judy M’Quirk, and the narrator Thady, whose garrulous narrative is interspersed with dialect words which as Edgeworth notes, were characteristic of many of Thady’s rank. Like Charlotte Brontë and unlike Emily, edgeworth glosses some of the dialect words and customs, noting that ‘ childer’ was used for ‘ children ( as it was in Yorkshire), ‘ gossoon’ for a little boy, ‘ fairy-mounts’ for barrows, and ‘banshee’ for ‘ a species of aristocratic fairly’ whose singing warned of imminent death. Charlotte was to use the ‘banshee’ hauntingly in her writing.

These are the different utterances in the Yorkshire dialect In Jane Eyre:

[1] Onding on snaw : about to snow ;probably ‘heavy with‘ or ‘threatening‘ snow . The usual meaning would be ‘snowing heavily’ as in Scott, Heart of Midlothian , ch.viii. ‘On-ding o’ snaw’

There is just a slight difference between Brontë’s and Scot’s use of dialect in this case. [2] Nichered : Laughed through the nose, like the neighing of a horse Here we notice that the past tense marker ‘ed’ is the same as in standard English for the regular verbs. [3] Lady-clock : ladybird

In this compound noun, the word ‘ clock’ replaces ‘bird’ which means that both object and animal may be used to make people wake up in the morning. However, here it is only the shape of the ladybird which is resembling the clock.

[4] Tyne : lose

[5] Knawn’t : don’t know One should note the omission of the auxiliary ‘do’ for the negative form in this dialect. Moreover, there is no need to tell that the difference is not important in this case since this example denotes a kind of similarity between both dialects.

Undoubtedly, Charlotte Brontë uses the expression ‘ing and holm’ : two north country words meaning stretches of land in, or alongside , water; or a meadow , particularly a meadow near a river which is liable to flooding with the sake of economy; it is easier to

say or write three short terms instead of giving their long equivalent in Standard English.

When using the phrase ‘that caps the globe’ instead of ‘ the beats everything’ for this Yorkshire dialect the ‘globe’ represents ‘everything’ because of its huge size.

[6] She’s noan faàl : she’s no fool ; sometimes it means not ugly

[7] Beck : a Northern word for a brook , particularly one that has a stony bed

[8] Likely : like or suitable

[9] Happen ….nor : perhaps….than

[10] Noan : not

[11] Agate : in mind or afoot

[12] Threaped : quarrelled

[13] Unlikely : inconvenient

In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights longer utterances are produced by for instance Joseph. Indeed, he once shouted ‘Whet are ye for ? T’ maister’s dahn i t’ fowld . Goa rahnd endut’laith , if yah went tuh spake tull him.’ This literally means: What do you want ? What are you the barn if you want to speak to him . First, we can clearly see that ‘the’ and the letter ‘t’ in general, is often replaced by the much imitated glottal stop, where the standard ‘t’ is either half pronounced as in this example: ‘ on t’bed’ for ‘on the bed’ or seemingly dropped as in ‘ ‘ ge’i’ e’en ’ for ‘ get it eaten’. In this way, written dialect which tends to be highly phonetic, i.e. it follows the way words actually sounds, can be ‘a sea of apostrophes’.( www.yorkshiredialect.com)

This is made obvious in the following examples ( 14 and 15) where sometimes we see on the written page of the novel ‘ t’’ for the and also ‘ ‘t ’ for it. In this dialect the letter ‘i’ as in ‘night’ is replaced by ‘ee’ in this local dialect. ‘Eedle seeght’ is for ‘idle sight’. Vowel sounds tend to be either shorter than Standard English as in ‘bath’ or ‘brass’, or broader, as in ‘abaht’ ( about) or ‘eead’ (head). As far as consonants are concerned, they tend be pronounced more emphatically but both spoken and written forms tend to drop the ‘h’ at the beginning of words and the ‘g’ at the end, as in ‘talkin’.( example 16 and 18)

[14] They’s nobbut t’ missis ; and shoo’ll nut oppen ‘t an ye mak yer flaysome dins till neeght .

There’s nobody but the missis , and she’ ll not open it even if you make your awful din till night .

[15] Uhd hah isn’t that nowt comed in frough th’ field , be this time ? What is he abaht ? girt eedle seeght!

And now is it that nought ( nothing = Heathcliff ) has not come in from the field by this time ? What is he about ? great idle sight !

[16] Aw woonder hagh yah can faishion tuh stand thear i ‘ idleness un war , when all on ’em’s goan aght ! Bud yah ‘re a nowt , and it’s noa use talkin’ -- yah’ll niver mend uhyer ill ways ; bud , goa raight tuh t’ divil , like yer mother afore ye !

I wonder how you can let yourself stand there in idleness and worse, when all of them have gone out !But you are a nought ( nothing ) , and it is no use talking –you’ re never mend your evil ( ill ) ways , but ( will ) go right to the devil like your mother before you .

When we consider the following utterance we may notice that there is a certain logic if not a strong relatedness between the two dialects – Yorkshire dialect and Standard English in the sense that the word ‘hearken’ is composed of two morphemes ‘hear’ followed by the imperative marker.

[17] Hearken , hearken , shoo’s cursing on em ! muttered Joseph , towards whom I had been steering .

Listen , listen (harken ,harken ) , she’s cursing them !

[18] Maister , maister , he’s stalin’ t ‘ lantern ! shouted the ancient , pursuin my retreat . Hey , Gnasher ! Hey dog , ! Hey , wolf hoold , him hoold !

Master , master , he is stealing the lantern ! ...Hey ,Gnasher …Hey wolf ! hold him , hold him !

something to do .

[138] I removed the habit , and there shone forth , beneath a grand plaid . Grand plaid ; silk frock ...

[139] Rush : reed .

Even songs are uttered in some appropriate circumstances to witness that it is somehow difficult for readers today to understand this quite harsh dialect perhaps ‘reflecting the hard lives often led by its speakers. As it has been noted by many specialists, this language contains many elements of Scandinavian. Moreover, there is considerable variation in sounds and spelling over quite short distances. “ In the Dales, for example, there are significant differences from one dale to another.” ( www.yorkshiredialect.com)

[19] It was far in the night , and the bairnies grat.

The mither beneath the mools heard that .

Bairnies grat : children wept ; mither: mother; mools : mounds of earth over graves .

[20] Nelly , he said , we’s hae a Crahnr’s quest enah , at ahr folks . One on ‘em’s a’ most getten his finger cut off wi’ hauding t’ other froo’ sticking hisseln loike a cawlf . That’s maister , yah knaw , uh soa up uh going tuh t’ grand ‘ sizes . He’s noan feard uh t’ Bench uh judges , norther Paul , nur Peter , nur John , nor Matthew , nor noan on ‘em , nut he !

Although the Yorkshire dialect preserves the distinction between ‘you’ as a subject and ‘you’ as an object, it uses ‘Him’ as a subject in the following sentence.

[21] There’s rahm fur boath yah , un yer pride , nah , Aw sud think i ‘ th ‘ hahse . It ‘ s empty ; yah muh hev it all tuh yerseln , un Him as allas maks a third , i’ sich ill company !

There ‘ s room for both you and your pride , now , I should think , in the house . It ‘ s empty ; you may have it all to yourself , and He ( God ) , who always makes a third , in such bad company ! know !

Trudgill ( 1990 :6 ) notices that: there are no really sharp dialect boundaries in England , and dialects certainly do not coincide with countries : Yorkshire Dialect , for instance, does not suddenly change dramatically into Durham

Dialect as we cross the country Durham boundary . Indeed , the dialects of the Northern Yorkshire are much more like those of County Durham than they are like those of Southern Yorkshire . Dialects form a continuum , and are very much a matter of more or less rather than either / or . There is really no such a thing as an entirely separate , self-contained dialect.

Yet, most people in Haworth think that even a Yorkshire accent is considered as a foreign language since it represents a distinctive pattern of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, accent and intonation as any other European language. Then according to the dialect society in Yorkshire, it is an ancient form of speech. One may perhaps mention Denis Taylor’s (1988) book on Hardy’s Metres and Victorian Prosody where he turns his attention to Hardy’s language. Taylor sees Hardy as a man rooted in History, demarcating himself from those scholars and writers who were more concerned with an acceptance of the synchronic nature of language. Hardy was brought up in a dialect speaking area of the country yet, he understood that the standard language had ‘to be his medium for communication’.Moreover the relation between the past of a language and its present expression is crucial to any study of dialect since another important similarity lies in the way a literary author and a lexicographer work; it has been said that the latter charts the history of words while the former explois this information in deciding which words to use. Evidently, this will affect also the way Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are written and what they contain.

3.3 . The use of slang in Jane Eyre

Some linguists consider slang as all the words ,phrases , meanings of words commonly used in talk among friends or colleagues , but not suitable for good writing or formal occasions . These creations of the spoken language progress rapidly , but they concern static semantic domains , tabous or affectively or socially strongly marked such as money like what we witness with the advent of the newly rich people .

Others think it is the language of the gangsters ; they use their non-technical words which please that social group . Their only desire is not to be understood by outsiders ; as soon as the latter get the meaning of that artificial language , the members of the group have to change their codes .

[1] Plucked : failed by the examiners [2] Snoopy : old slang for infatuated lover [3] Flame : old slang for girl friend

[4] Trailing : this slang term is no longer used , it is another archaism [5] Sparks : fashionable young men [6] Paynim : old word for ‘pagan’ [7] Doffed : archaic , taken off [8] Dead as a herring : archaic slang , we might now say ‘dead as mutton’

[9] Strapper : a large-limbed girl [10] Quiz : archaic slang , a figure of fun , someone to be laughed at [11] It passes me : archaic slang , I can’t understand it [12] I hied me : archaic , I took myself [13] Scathed : another archaism , injured [14] Rued : regretted [15] Betimes : early , in good time

The function of this informal style is to reveal to us as readers that many varieties may go hand in hand in a lot of writings such as poetry, prose and also drama. Generally speaking, slang is more flexible than any ordinary dialect in the sense that it depends strongly on the speaker’s age group and sometimes it is subject to fashion. In our case the writer is bidialectal; this means she uses Standard English and slang.

3.4. Words and phrases in French in Jane Eyre 31

Linguists are aware of the fact that some ‘ patterned symbols ’ from one language cannot easily be transferred into patterned symbols from another language . This means that French terms and idioms are untranslatable in English . This is partly due to the differences which exist between the two cultures . These causes probably state and confine the absolute limits of translatability

31 With the help of Anne Holker ‘s list of foreign words in Jane Eyre. As far as Wuthering Heights is concerned I relied on Stephen Coote’s Glossary.

which derive from the ‘ theory of translation equivalence ‘ i.e. the absence of similarity between the two cultures .

[1] Ami : friend

[2] Badinage : banter

[3] Beauté mâle : an ugliness which has a certain beauty

[4] Bon jour mesdames

[5] Bonne : nurse

[6] Bonsoir : good evening

[7] C’est là , ma gouvernante ? : is that my governess?

[8] Carte blanche : full permission

[9] Chez maman , … quand il y avait du monde , je les suivais partout , au salon et à leurs chambres ; souvent je regardais les femmes de chambres coiffer et habiller les dames , et c’était si amusant : comme cela on apprend :

‘At Mother’s house , when lots of people were there , I used to follow them everywhere into the drawing - room and into their bedrooms : often I would watch the maids arrange their hair and dress them – and it was such good fun. You learn like that.

Adèle could have added that we also learn how to speak in these situations where the French language is the best to express these futilities. For a person speaking his native tongue, a word or, a morpheme presents itself not as an item of vocabulary but as a word that has been used in a wide variety of utterances by co-speaker A, co-speaker B, co-speaker C and so on, and has been variously used in the speaker’s own utterances. (Vološinov, 1973:70)

[10] Chiffonnières : movable low small cupboards with a top forming a sideboard

[11] Choler : anger

[12] Consoles : bookcases ; a console can also be a small table , properly one which is supported by a fixed bracket against a wall

[13] Contes de fées : stories about fairies

[14] Croquant : munching

[15] Diablerie : devilish business

[16] Du reste , il n’y avait pas de fées , et quand même il y en avait … : Anyway , there are no such things as fairies , and even if there were ..

[17] Elles changent de toilettes : they are getting ready

[18] En masse : together

[19] En règle : to the rule

[20] Equipages : crew or team

[21] Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendre une seule de ces fleurs magnifiques , mademoiselle ? Seulement pour compléter ma toilette : Could I not just take one of these lovely flowers , Miss , to put the inishing touches to my outfit

[22] Est-ce que ma robe va bien ? et mes souliers ? et mes bras ? Tenez , je crois que je vais danser : Is my dress all right ? and my shoes ? and my arms ? Wait , I think I shall danse [23] Et alors quel dommage : well , what a shame

[24] ‘ Et cela doit signifier’ , said she , qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau pour moi , et peut être pour vous aussi Mademoiselle . Monsieur a parlé de vous : il m’a demandé le nom ed ma gouvernante , et si elle n’était pas une petite personne , assez mince et un peu pâle . J’ai dit qu’oui : car c’est vrai , n’est-ce pas Mademoiselle ? :

And that must mean that there’s a present for me in there , and perhaps for you , too , Miss . Mr Rochester has spoken about you . He has asked me the name of my governess and whether she wasn’t rather small , thin and a bit pale . I replied that you were , because it’s true , isn’t it , Miss ? [25] Etre : to be

[26] Faux air : disguise

[27] Gardez vous en bien : look after yourself carefully

[28] Girandoles : branched supports for candles

[29] Il faut que je l’ essaie et à l’ instant même : I must try it immediately.

[30] Et j’y tiens : and I insist upon it

[31] Jeune encore : young as well

[32] La belle passion : the great love affair

[33] La fillette Adèle : the little girl Adele

[34] La ligue des Rats , fable de la Fontaine : the Ligue of Rats , fable written by the famous french fabulist , Jean de la Fontaine (1621-95) , who brought his fables about animals , managed to convey a great deal about human behaviour

[35] Le cas : appropriate , timely , the thing to do

[36] Ma boite : my box

[37] Mais oui Mademoiselle : voilà cinq ou six heures que nous n’avons pas mangé : but yes Miss : it must be five or six hours since we last ate

[38] Mais oui , certainement : yes , of course

[39] Mesdames , vous êtes servies ! …j’ai bien faim , moi ! : Ladies , dinner is served ! ... I am very hungry !

[40] Minois chiffonné : crumpled little face with pretty but irregular features

[41] Mon ange : my angel

[42] Monsieur , je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonté . C’est comme cela que maman faisait , n’est ce pas monsieur ? : Sir , I thank you a thousand times for your generosity . This is how Mother used to danse , isn’t it ?

According to Roman Jacobson a study of 1.072 words for mother and father in a number of non-related languages has shown that these languages have developed similar words for father and mother on the basis of nursery forms (Jacobson, 1971: 53). As a result, 55% of the words for mother include the sounds

[m], [n], [ ], while only 15% of the words for father these consonant classes.

This is as Jacobson points out that the nasal murmur

is the only sound that a child can produce while sucking his or her mother’s breast. Jacobson that this sound is associated to the mother, to food, to satisfaction and other wishes. The problem for Jacobson is for course the structuralist axiom of arbitrarity. He must maintain that phonemes are meaningless, and therefore he restricts these arguments to this particular area of human life.

Yet, when we learn our mother tongue we unconsciously internalize a social and cultural order. In our living, thinking and communicating we can more or less support or non-support the internalized social and cultural order). Moreover, we do not learn our mother tongue once and for all, but in a lifelong creative, co-creative and con-creative process (Jorgen Door, 1998:42). Therefore Adèle will have a possibility of changing her way of living, thinking and communicating since she moved from France to England.

[43] N’est pas , monsieur qu’ il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre dans votre petit coffre ? : There is a present for Miss Eyre in your little trunk , isn’t there sir .

[44] Oh qu’elle y sera mal - peu confortable : Oh it will be awful for her - so uncomfortable

[45] Par parenthèse : by the way

[46] Parterre : flower-bed

[47] Père noble de théâtre : grand old man of the theatre

[48] Petit coffre : little trunk

[49] Pour me donner une contenance : to give the impression of being composed

[50] Prénomens : Christian names

[51] Prête à croquer sa petite maman anglaise : ready to eat her little English mother

[52] Porte- cochère : carriage entrance

[53] Protégée ( his ) : protected

[54] Qu’avez-vous donc ? lui dit un de ces rats ; parlez. What’s wrong ? one of the rats said to him ; speak.

[55] Qu’avez-vous , mademoiselle ? Vos doigts tremblent comme la feuille et vos joues sont rouges : mais rouges comme des cerises ! What is wrong , Miss ? Your fingers are trembling like a leaf , and your cheeks are red :why , red as cherries !

[56] Religieuses : nuns

[57] Revenez bientôt , ma bonne amie , ma chère Mlle Jeannette: Come back soon , my good friend ,my dear Miss Jane

[58] Sacques : loose-fitting dresses , especially those with the sack-back - two box-pleats hanging from the shoulders and then merging into the skirt . These were fashionable in the mid- eighteenth century.

[59] Sans mademoiselle : without miss

[60] Surtout : overcoat

[61] Taille d’athlète : athlete’s physique

[62] Tant pis : too bad

[63] Tête-à-tête : solely in the company of Tiens-tu tranquille , enfant , comprends-tu ? Oh ciel ! Que c’est beau : keep calm , child , understand ? Oh Heavens ! , it’s beautiful.

[64] Un vrai menteur : a real liar

[65] Voilà Monsieur Rochester : here is Mr Rochester

[66] Voiture : carriage or coach

[67] Roué : wastrel or rake

[68] Portmanteau : a clothes-rack or arrangement of hooks to hang clothes on . [69] Dentelles: Clothes made of lace.

These utterances produced in French by the writer are denoting a lot about her attitude vis à vis the French society in comparison to the English who consider themselves as having a higher prestige expressed with the use of a high variety revealing ‘superiority’ or at least a detachment from the other. Even the topics reflect a certain lack of maturity not only because they remind us the absurdity of the speech situation but also because the performer of the speech events is a child. A child who behaves like a puppet or more precisely like a consequence of an appropriate French education that has been given to a girl supposed to live in England where behaviour and good manners are crucial if not vital.

In addition, Adèle’s use of French is an important sign of a character who has learnt French from a native speaker or a person who has a native speaker’s command of the language. In her case, it is her mother Céline since the learner is likely to come across this linguistic situation in everyday French speech. Probably , it is not easy for her to adapt herself to new manners and customs since both of them need a language congenial to an English mind in order to be expressed properly.

According to most Encyclopedias and dictionaries French influence in England begins with the Norman Conquest (1066) by William the Conqueror. As it has been said his aim was neither to combine the lands of Normandy and England nor to replace language or culture. Latin and English were used for formal documents. At that time various dialects of French were spoken on the continent. Hence the French used by the Norman landed gentry Parisian French. Besides, William succeeded in preserving English as a national language and ‘French as a native language is definitely on the decline, even among nobility of Norman origin’. (Kibee, 1991:4)

Geographical variations must be taken into consideration in the sense that the population of parts of England spoke French. In the 13th and early 14th centuries French became a marker of prestige, ambition and class. And ‘ upper class students who wanted to join the prestigious ranks of politicians, lawyers, judges and diplomats would learn continental French to help secure their futures’ ( Kibee, 1991:5). Consequently, bilingualism became popular among the elite.

3.5. Latin idiomatic expressions in Jane Eyre

Words in Italian are used for the sake of economy. I think the writer prefers them to their long equivalents in English because they sound more appropriate to the situation; in fact, some smell the opera which is typical to Italy and some others reflect the strength of religion in that time due to the power of the church of Rome. By the same token God with all his creation is dignified. Here are some examples:

[1] Forte : strong point

[2] ‘Sotto voce’ : in a low voice

[3] Inamorata : a woman with whom one is in love.

I am quite sure that the use of this term is giving more credibility to the discourse. It resembles the use of Leila in the Arabic literature when writers most of the time say ‘his Leila’ is a girl from his tribe’, for instance.

[4] Signior Eduardo : ‘ Sir Edward ‘ as in the language of opera

[5] Donna Bianca : ‘Lady Blanche’ in the same language

[6] Rizzio : Italian name 32

[7] ‘Con spirito’ : musical term in Italian

[8] D.V. : short for Deo volente - if God is willing

[9] ‘Lusus naturae’ : a freak of nature or prodigy

32 David Rizzio was the Italian secretary to Mary Queen of Scots(1542-87) , murdered by her husband , while James Hepburn , the Earl of Bothwell , who later kidnapped and married her , was a figure of romantic violence and intrigue . Here I have followed Barty Nkight ‘s notes.

[10] ‘ Cui bono’ : what good would it be ?

[11] Ad infinitum : without limit , for ever

[12] Ignis-fatuus : misleading sign or light ; ridiculous passion

[13] ‘Resurgam ‘ : I shall rise again

In any religion there is always this call for resurrection which serves sometimes as a warning for those who are behaving evilly and as

3.6. Words and phrases in German in Jane Eyre

One should bear in mind that no language is pure and I believe this is also valid to dialects. In fact, Scandinavian influence on Yorkshire dialect added to Old English of the Angles who brought a Germanic language with them in the fifth century eliminated the Celtic language of the earlier inhabitants which is preserved now mainly in the form of Welsh. Moreover, in the ninth century when the Vikings invaded England Yorkshire was divided into three Ridings: North, East and West. In the Yorkshire dialect we can still see ‘Scandinavian influences leftover from the Viking invasion.’ (Burnley, 2000) Here are some examples of a few Viking words, ‘gate’ from the old Norse word ‘gata’ meaning ‘not’. The Yorkshire dialect word ‘bairn’ from the Norwegian word ‘barn’ meaning ‘child’ in standard English.

[1] Bauerinnen : German peasant women

[2] ‘Da trat hervor Einer , anzusehen wie die Sternen Natch‚’ :‘ there trod one from thence who looked at the night stars’ quote from Schiller

[3] German Grafinnen : German baronesses

[4] ’Ich erwage die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes lund die Werke mitdem Gewichte meines Grimms ’ : I weigh my thoughts in the scales of my sorrow and my acts in the weighing of my anger’ quote from the nineteenth- century German poet Schiller .

All these German terms used by Charlotte Brontë, do not come out of air. Yet, this is due to the fact that she read the German poet Schiller and his influence cannot be denied or hiden. Moreover the writer wanted to express exactly what said Schiller and in his own words.

Conclusion

To be on the safe side , I will probably encourage these borrowings, switchings from one language to another or from one variety to another ; surely it will contribute to a better understanding of this frightening phenomenon . We have seen in this chapter that in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre the writers make use

of not only different languages but also different varieties of the same language, i.e. Yorkshire dialect and slang.

It has been said that writing is an instrument for conveying ideas from one mind to another and the writer’s aim is to make his reader apprehend his meaning . Even when the writer knows what she means and uses a precise language which is clear to him, she is not sure it is equally clear to his reader . ‘ The difficulty is not to write , but to write what you mean 33 , not to affect your reader , but to affect him precisely as you wish ’ . If I had to illustrate this particular statement , I would opt for the language used in a pertinent speech situation stated by Lewis Carroll. One vivid example can be when Alice is told to keep running in order to stay in the same place. “ Now, here, you see, it takes all the running..” ( in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.)

The recipient of the utterance will be ‘ unable to unlock the secret ’ of the dialect without a key i.e. a kind of translation into Standard English to diminish this obscurity of thought in the way of expressing themselves . But no one feels the need to write again in order to express her already ready and precise meaning . Every child knows that similar sentences are used to indicate one conjuncture of meanings when the mother is speaking and a different conjuncture of meaning when the father utters them. And furthermore, The same mother ‘means something different when she uses similar words and sentences in different situations, i.e. situations constituted

33 See Appendix II when Lewis Carroll’s simple language constitutes an absurd reality where double meanings of words creates a new dimension. He plays with reality, language and logic.

by different persons or circumstances.’ And the similar meanings are put in different words by different persons. We can even mention ‘one person puts similar meanings in different words in different situations’.( Jacobson,1971:53)

Moreover, it is very difficult to know , to say and to convey what one means , specially using the right words , not to mention that handling of words concerning the nature and importance of grammar , syntax and idiom . Perhaps , all these may lead to confused expressions , so as to think that perhaps language is in decay since we all know that we are ourselves a part in determining the conjuncture of meanings, both by our interpretations and by our linguistic uttering and other signs.

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Chapter four Meaning in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre

4.1. Introduction

Both semantics and pragmatics are concerned with meaning, but semantics studies it as a property of language , wheras pragmatics considers it in terms of language use . The former is rule – governed , and is conceived of as a theory that deals with the meaning aspect of language as a system . It characterizes and explains the systematic relations between words and between sentences and is thus able to predict . Pragmatics , on the other hand , treats meaning not at an abstract level of the system but at the concrete level of use . It deals with meaning in terms of speaker’s intention , hearer’s interpretation , context and performance or ‘ action ’.34

Therefore we should distinguish what is said, which is a purely semantic notion, from what an utterance means which is determined pragmatically depending, in part, on tne speaker’s communicative intention and broad features of context. What is said and what is conveyed are two totally different matters. So, one may claim that the meaning of an object changes as it enters into new situations: new contexts, intentions and conventions. As a result, all the characters in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are using different languages when addressing different people and each character has to adapt his speech to the different listeners according to the different situations and settings; all these choices are but the invention of the writers.

34 Leech , 1981 : 310

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The term ‘ pragmatics ’ is taken in its current sense by Bar-Hillel (1968:271). Thus pragmatics concerns itself not only with the interpretation of indexical expressions but with ‘ the essential dependence of communication in natural languages ’ on speaker and hearer , on linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts. It also deals with the availability of background knowledge , on readiness to obtain this background knowledge and on the good will of the participants in a communication act.

For example the use of English by Emily Brontë in her novel always varies according to a number of factors , and has to be appropriate to the occasion , the audience and the topic . As stated by Denis Freeborn ( 1993 ) in speaking or writing English we have to make choices from our vocabulary , or store of words , sometimes called lexis , so that we are said to make lexical choices and also from grammar and pronunciation in speech ; by grammar is meant the form that words take i.e. word – structure or morphology , and how words are ordered into sentences , sometimes called syntax , so that they make meaning .

4.2. Semantics / Pragmatics

Linguists have come to the general conclusion that the physical environment , or context , is perhaps more easily recognised as having a powerful impact on how referring expressions are to be interpreted . The physical context of a speech community , perhaps even the conventions of those who live in the same house , may be crucial to the interpretation of speech . I may consider for instance some characters living in the same

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house , Thrushcross Grange or Wuthering Heights for Wuthering Heights and the private boarding – school or the Manor for Jane Eyre .

As Chomsky ( 1962:103 ) points out ,

part of the difficulty with the theory of meaning is that ‘ meaning tends to be used as a catch-all term to include every aspect of language that we know very little about . ”

And Lehrer ( 1974 :33 ) stressed this fact when he devised certain tests which were meant essentially to measure semantic similarity and others to determine the degree of semantic difference . The tests made use of native speakers ’ intention , and the results showed that judgements were not stable for meanings which were very different or very similar , i.e. for words with meanings occupying both ends of a continuum on sense relations. The unclear cases fall in-between these extremes .

Lehrer ( 1974 : 36 ) used the scaling method to determine which meanings are more similar and thus , conversely , less different , and vice versa , but this method is far from being decisive . The reason is that there is variability not only for different speakers , but for the same speaker at different times . This implies an element of arbitrariness will be present when deciding on the distance between two or more meanings .

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Moreover , the non-linguistic context can be taken to refer to the more immediate context of situation as well as the broader context of culture . The expression ‘ context of sit ’ is always associated with the name of J.R Firth who regarded meaning as an essentially social phenomenon and , thus , as something that cannot be dissociated from the social context in which the utterance is embedded .

Yet, communication as defined by James Carrey ( quoted in:

Murray ,2002:4 ) is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced maintained , repaired and transformed ... reality is brought into existence ,is produced , by communication – by in short , the construction ,apprehension and utilization of symbolic forms . Reality, while not a mere function of symbolic forms , is produced by terminological systems - or by humans who produce such systems - that focus its existence in specific terms .

This definition implies that communication is a process of ‘making’ reality where significant symbols are formed and understood . Indeed, one may claim that the meaning of an object changes as it enters into new situations: new contexts, intentions and also conventions.

To understand in Gadamer‘s sense (quoted in : Dostal , 2002:41) , is to articulate (a meaning , a thing , an event ) into words , words that are always mine , but at the same time those of what I strive to understand . The application that is at the core of every understanding process thus grounds in language . It has

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been called by Dostal ( 2002: 42 ) ‘ implicit understanding ’ , which conceals the view of the other in our form of life and culture .

It is an interesting feature of language that the meaning of a word depends on more than what it refers to . Words carry associations which often come from our sense of what they mean in the contexts in which they are habitually used (Labov, 1970: 283) . Phrases can recall particular registers e.g. ‘ supply and demand ’; it may also be the case that certain words can be defined as belonging only to a context of poetry .

Hence , ‘ logopoeia ‘ as defined by Ezra Pound (quoted in Leech, 1969:34) is ‘ the dance of the intellect among words ’, that is to say , it employs words not only for their direct meaning , but it takes count in a special way of habits of usage , of the context we expect to find with the word , its usual concomitants , of its own acceptances , and ironical play . ‘ It holds the aesthetic content which is peculiarly the domain of verbal manifestation , and cannot possibly be contained in plastic or music ’. Such a notion of poetical language in words and phrases in the poem and prose version of the same locutions exist .

For David Crystal semantics is the study of linguistic meaning . He discusses under the heading of ‘reference’ the fact that we think of words as relating ‘ things ’ in the world . However , semanticists do not agree with this . They use the term ‘sense ’ rather than ‘ reference . On this concern David Crystal explains that ‘ the focus of the modern subject ( of semantics ) is on the way

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people relate words to each other within the framework of their language.’

The term ‘ word ‘ is used for any inflected variant ,for instance ‘open ‘ ‘ opens ‘, ‘opened ‘ , ‘ opening ‘ are different forms of the same lexeme . One of the sense relations among lexemes is the syntagmatic / paradigmatic relations . Syntagmatic is the way lexemes are related in a horizontal line whereas paradigmatic is the way words can substitute for each other in the same sentence context .

According to the philosopher J. L. Austin pragmatics is the study of ‘ how to do things with words ‘ or of the meaning of language in context ; undoubtedly , context does contribute to make sense . A statement must be valid in a context in which speech acts are uttered .This means that the sentence must be not only correctly performed but also ‘ felicitous ’ ; one of the types David Crystal mentions is concerned with preparatory conditions, perhaps the best example in Jane Eyre is that of Mr Brocklehurst ; this character , a caricature of hypocrisy , maintains he abhors pride and vanity , yet when we see him for the second time at Lowood , he is accompanied by his family whose dress and demeanour is anything but humble :’ they were splendidly attired in velvet , silk and furs.’ Anne Holker ( 1986: 84 ) is not the only critic who states that :

his hypocrisy is so monstrous that it blinds him to the terrible destruction that bad diet and comfortless

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accommodation are to wreak the Lowood girls . Many of the typhus victims would have survived had it not been for Brocklehurst pasimony . His ‘ Christianity ‘ is of the most dangerous kind .

In fact , when Mrs Reed asked him about the educational institution Jane was going to , he answered:

.. Humility is a christian grace , and one peculiarly appropriate to the pupils of Lowood ; .....and only the other day , I had a pleasing proof of my success . My second daughter Augusta , went with her mama to visit the school , and on her return she exclaimed : “ Oh , dear papa , how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look ! with their hair combed behind their ears , and their long pinafores , and those little holland pockets outside their frocks - they are almost like poor people ‘s children ! ” and said she , “they looked at my dress and mama’s, as if they had never seen a silk gown before .”

Once more following the famous linguist Crystal one has to wonder : has the person performing the speech act the authority to do so ? Are the participants in the correct state to have that act performed on them ? In this case the speech act is expressed by a contradiction between how the other girls should be and how his own daughters are .

Literature and life go together hand in hand. In fact literary texts directly reflect experience of what happens in the world . Sometimes , they are reflecting the world we are living in

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and our experience of it . At other times this is done indirectly ; it is probably the case that the less the literature is directly relevant to the reader , the more he or she has to find ways of linking the two , that is , of building bridges between his own experiences and the experiences described in the work of literature . One may perhaps wonder about the fancy situations encountered in for instance Kafka’s The Metamorphosis published in 1914.

The situation is depicted in a novella by the German writer Franz Kafka : a man wakes up one morning to find he has turned into a beetle . His family is not surprised by this and continues to treat him in the way they have always treated him . On one level , the situation is impossible ; on another level , Kafka could be saying that the family had always treated him as if he were an insect. Kafka is not depicting the situation directly or realistically. But indirectly he could be said to be representing the truth of the situation .

The reality which is depicted is not one of those we see everyday . Perhaps we see it only in dreams , or nightmares . So , it is not easy at all to explain or interpret what is being represented in some literary texts that are too far from experiences we can identify with . All this is done with the help of that complex means of communication between human beings which is language.

If one takes the ‘interview ‘ below as a measure of the verbal capacity of Jane , it must function as her capacity to defend herself in a hostile and threatening situation. I think this is what William Labov (1972) called “the result of regular sociolinguistic

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factors operating upon adult and child in this asymmetrical situation.” Mr Brocklehurst threatens Jane with death and asks her : ‘… Well , Jane Eyre , and are you a good child ?’ It was impossible for the little girl to reply to this in the affirmative since her environment held a contrary opinion ; the only alternative for her is to be silent . Here power and reliance are denoted through age , social class , and affectionate or kinship relations .

In fact , Jane has no hope to find somebody who is supposed to defend her in this horrible situation where Mr Brocklehurst examines her with “two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkle under a pair of bushy brows” as described by Charlotte Brontë herself .

Any sociolinguistic analysis requires to go beyond language. When studying natural conversation sociolinguists are becoming increasingly aware verbal and nonverbal - linguistic and non-linguistic codes- and rules of co-occurence. Body motion is essential to interpretation of communicative conduct. It sometimes substitute for linguistic means according to a kinesic – linguistic exercice which deals with the correlation of the vocalic and the movement stream.

Even the position in the room of the participants i.e. Mrs Reed , Mr Brocklehurst and the miserable Jane is connotative : Mr Brocklehurst sits his person in the arm-chair , opposite Mrs Reed’s and orders Jane to come over; she steps across the rug and he places her ‘ square and straight before him ’ ; his face is almost on

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a level with hers ! Every acute detail is there to function as a fence to close any subterfuge ; ‘what a great nose ! and what a mouth ! and what large prominent teeth ! ‘ Jane thought .

Without any clemency his speech begins like this :

No sight so sad as that of a naughty child , especially a naughty little girl . Do you know where the wicked go after death ?

Jane’s ready and orthodox answer is : ‘They go to hell .’ And what is hell ? Can you tell me that ?’ A pit full of fire . And should you like to fall into that pit and to be burning for ever ? No , sir. What must you do to avoid it ?

At this moment Jane thinks over for a moment as stated by the writer herself and then her answer when it comes , was objectionable:

I must keep in good health , and not die .

How can you keep in good health ? Children younger than you die daily . I buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since , -- a good little child , whose soul is now in heaven . It is to be feared the same could not be said of you ,were you to be called hence .

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Once more Jane cannot remove his doubt , instead she only casts her eyes on the two large feet planted on the rug ,and sighs , wishing herself far enough away as Charlotte Brontë put it so subjectively .

Mr Brocklehurst added :

I hope that sigh is from the heart , and that you repent of ever having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress . Benefactress ! Benefactress ! said Jane inwardly : they all call Mrs. Reed my benefactress ; if so , a benefactress is a Disagreable thing .

It goes without saying that the word ‘ benefactress ‘ has a totally different meaning depending on the speaker ; used by Mr. Brocklehurst its sense has to please Mrs. Reed’s point of view and feelings whereas uttered by Jane it expresses the root of all her sadness and despair .

Jane’s interrogator continues :

Do you say your prayers night and morning ? Yes , sir . Do you read your bible ? Sometimes . With pleasure ? Are you fond of it ? I like revelations and the book of Daniel , and Genesis and Samuel , and a little bit of Exodus , and some parts of Kings and Chronicles , and Job and Jonah . And the Psalms ? I hope you like them .

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No , sir . No ? oh , shocking ! I have a little boy , younger than you , who knows six psalms by heart ; and when you ask him which he would rather have , a gingerbread- nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn , he says : Oh ! the verse of a Psalm ! Angels sing Psalms ; says he , I wish to be a little angel here below ; he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety .

When denying the Psalms Jane is demonstrating her sincerity and her honesty . There is no such recompense for her whether she likes or not the Psalms. However , for Mr. Brocklehurst ’s son, his reaction to this religious kind of literature is hypocritical; he keeps telling his father about his preference for Psalms in order to get twice his favourite nuts . His speech is the opposite of what he thinks i.e. he does not mean what he says.

His father is probably aware of this astucious language ; however, he tries to hide his feelings since his purpose is to spoil his son . Using his children as the best and most pious while Jane serves as an illustration for what is bad and forbidden, this language reflects his selfishness and ‘wicked heart ‘ to use his own expression qualifying Jane. In fact he addresses her with this phrase when she gives her own opinion concerning Psalms :

Jane: Psalms are not interesting . Mr Brocklehurst: That proves you have a wicked heart ; and you must

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pray to God to change it : to give you a new and clean one : to take away your heart of stone and give you one of flesh .

The poor girl is in an asymmetrical situation where anything she says can literally be held against her . Yet , she has learnt a number of devices to use in such situation just in order to defend herself since she is sure nobody will do it for her . One may observe the intonation patterns of which Jane uses for the first time with Mr Brocklehurst when she is asked a question to which the answer is obvious to that man but totally different for that little girl. Although the reader has just a printed paper in front of him or her, he or she is quite aware of these intonations since either the narrator or the writer are omnipresent to clarify, to add the necessary details to the quality of the production of speech. This is done in such a way that it helps to create the actual situation like in a film adaptation. This is what we really feel when we read a piece of writing: it can never be inanimate, it appears in our mind as if it were performed.

Furthermore, many scholars believe that the disordered, disjointed movement of the prose through colons, semi-colons and simple sentences, is perhaps one of the most immediately striking things about Jane Eyre, expressing the disorder of its heroine’s emotions.

These sociolinguistic factors control speech even in a non-verbal behaviour occuring in a relatively favourable context for adult -child interaction . Hence , Jane ‘s answer is quick , ingenious , and decisive . One may note the the speed and the

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precision of Jane’s mental operations . She does not wonder , or insert meaningless verbiage . It is often said that children find it difficult to deal with hypothetical and abstract questions , but in this case, Jane manages to exercise her wit and logic on the most improbable and problematic matters as in her ‘interview with Mr Brocklehurst . No one can read these novels without being convinced that they are in the presence of a skilled speaker with great ‘ verbal presence of mind ‘ , who can use the English language expertly for many purposes .

When Jane is finally overthrown by the situation which obliges her to leave her aunt’s home to go to the charity house her behaviour, her idiolect changes completely ; the monosyllabic speaker who has nothing to say about anything and cannot remember what she did yesterday has disappeared . Instead , we have a girl who has so much to say to the point that she keeps interrupting Mrs Reed. In addition she seems to have no difficulty in using the English language and to produce meaningful speech acts she has never uttered.

4.3. Function of the use of local dialects .

It has been said that a dialect associated with a particular class can be called a sociolect. A dialect can be distinguished by its pronunciation, ( phonology and prosody ), its vocabulary and grammar. An accent is not a dialect because for the former the difference is only in terms of pronunciation, “ although in common usage ‘dialect’ and ‘accent’ are usually synonymous.” Etymologically

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the term dialect comes from the Greek word ‘ dialektos’ , a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language’s speakers’. It has also been stated that the term ‘ dialect’ is applied most often to regional speech patterns but it may also be defined by other factors, such as social class’.

With human subjects , it is absurd to believe that an identical response is obtained by asking everyone the same question . The verbal capacity of the characters can be studied within the social and cultural context in which they are at the time of the production of speech , thus of language . Lockwood’s statement ‘ I am come ’ may be seen as ‘ extraordinary ’ in the light of the current belief of many linguists that many people do not speak in well- formed sentences , and that their actual speech production of ‘performance’ is ungrammatical .35

The out- of –the –way words in Wuthering Heights , for instance , provide nice shades of meaning unattainable in standard English . Surely one cannot just distinguish between them in terms of grammar , pronounciation and usage , but diction , intonation and stress are also important ; when Emily Brontë decides who is the character allowed to use a local speech , with its ‘ unguessable dialect words ‘ , hence its own ‘ flavour ‘ and its special way of feeling , it ‘ conveys the tone of voice and captures the very movement of the village mind’.36 Effectively , the tones of the characters’ speech are convincingly caught , and although there is little specific visual detail,

35 Chomsky, 1965 : 58. 36 Leavis, 1962 : 38.

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the reader is almost made to see and to feel the harshness of the climate. Characters are drawn in various ways as Joseph’s idiosyncratic obscure expressions otherwise readers are referred to the glossaries when there are some . For example, instead of saying: ‘there’s room for both you and your pride, now, I should think, in the house. You may have it all to yourself, and God, who always makes a third, in such bad company!’, he produces the following utterance:

There is rahm fur boath yah un yer pride, nah, Aw sud think i’ th’ hahse. Yah muh hev it all tuh yerseln, un Him as allas maks a third, i’ sich ill company!

In the whole utterance there are eight words which look like Standard English; however, we cannot claim to start here a philogical analysis of the discourse but one is sure of a genetic classification of languages and the inevitable relatedness that exists between them.

Moreover , the whole personage embodies a peculiarity of temperament and way of speaking which can be determined only by feelings for landscape . This fact has been clearly illustrated in the utterances of many characters , such as Catherine Earnshaw , one of the most important characters in Wuthering Heights .

In the interests of concentration , however , it is necessary for me to confine my attention to the two novels . According to me the first introduces a highly successful character , Joseph , with his typical speech , height , homely manner , emphasis of voice and gestures. For example take the following utterance:

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‘ what are ye come for , young men ? ’ Local residents of Haworth are regarded as ‘ good dialect speakers’. In our study, the writers themselves can be evaluated as such. So they may not downgrade others for using speech features which they themselves also employ.

Emily Brontë is not aiming at the kind of direct transcript of folk speech that one would make nowadays with the help of a tape-recorder. We also have on the literary side a combination of motionless rhetoric with the proverbial and metaphorical vigour of popular speech although proverbs are seldom used in ordinary speech or writing. The native speaker know the meaning of most English proverbs, but he or she will use one rarely, and then only when he would like to be humorous, or by referring to the proverb in an indirect way ( for example by quoting only half of it), or by introducing it by saying ‘ you know what they say...’ or ‘ as the old saying goes...’37

If the sayings and proverbs and the tale itself have not some interesting relevance to the total context in which they occur , at least superstition and the hint for the supernatural are the sources from which arises the finest art , the uniqueness of these novels. Wuthering Heights is considered as the most purely inspired; Charlotte Brontë herself mentions ‘Fate or Inspiration’, an issue which probably denotes all the richness o f the language used on the occasion.

37 Oxford Dictionary, 1985 :xxvii.

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In the nineteenth century there was a growing interest in philology in England in the history of language and in the value of surviving dialects already threatened with extinction in throwing light on the origin of words and their forms as Elisabeth Murray said ( 1979 : 50 ). Britain has lagged behind Germany in philological study. She gave the example of Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte , the nephew of Napoleon who collected examples of dialects and wrote to Henry Scott Riddell , author of poems and songs in Border dialect . He asked him to put the gospel of Saint Matthew and the book of Psalms into lowland Scotch .

Murray ( 1979 : 51 ) put a finger on the unscientific quality of Riddell’s work. It is an attempted restoration and not the Scotch of any of the particular time or district or the rendering of any passage into the spoken language would appear before the world , not as an opinion but as a testimony, not a picture from memory or from fancy but an actual photograph of the very tones in the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, what he was criticising and calling ‘bad grammar’ in his own pupils’ work by English Standards , was in fact ‘good grammar’ in Scotch and for his own satisfaction he wrote a Scott Grammar demonstrating this.

Finally Elizabeth Murray realised that the Border dialect of Riddell’s childhood speech was not something local but belonged in fact to the Anglo-Saxon root and he began working at Scotch in the light of Anglo-Saxon. He could trace the Highland speech to Gaelic

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38 origins and in the Strathclyde area he found works akin to Welsh , but the Border and the east owed their speech to the Anglian invaders , with some added Norse 39 elements.

Ronald Carter (2002:49) tried to drop any demarcation line between what ‘is’ correct and what ‘is’ not , when he mentioned the powerful class imposing their own language and regarding it as having more prestige ; yet , their only aim is to govern :

A way of more powerful groups marking out their own social movement and prevent others’ access to forms of language as prestigious and ‘correct’ and that of others as inadequate in order to forestall power .

As asserted by Labov (1969:197) “ all communities agree that standard English is the ‘proper’ medium for formal writing

As far as concerning the use of French, German and other varieties, many linguists assert that in bilingual speech communities, there is often the alternating use of two languages; as this phenomenon is called switching between languages or code-switching . Hence, Aline was born and raised till the age of seven in France where the language of everyday use is French; thus her conversation produced in this language can only reflect her competence in this domain deriving most of the time from her speech habits and her previous background. Nobody ignores the necessity to examine code-switching in relation to the social and psychological background of its users .

38 Erse and Irish are the two dialects of the Celtic branch called Gaelic.The former is spoken in the Highlands. They have been introduced by the last group of immigrants to settle in Britain before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons. 39 A Norwegian language.

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4.3. Paradigmatic patterning in conversation .

What is meant by paradigmatic here is our concern with the forms and the ways of address of some characters vis à vis some others, especially Heathcliff addressing Mr. Lockwood and Joseph. We may also mention the second-person singular: ‘thah’, ‘tuh’, or ‘thee’ as a form of address, used in speaking to children, intimate friends, and by servants to their equals in rank, but not to the ‘gentry’. Furthermore, there are many ways to deal with this topic. One may be reminded of Tolstoy and his description about his grandmother when she talks to people. Thus the opposite of the expected usage of language can confuse, humiliate or even affront a n addresse. He says in the twentieth chapter of his Childhood :

Grandmother had a singular gift of expressing her opinion about other people under certain circumstances by using the plural and singular pronouns of the second person together with a certain tone of voice. She used vy and ty contrary to general custom, and on her lips these shades of meaning acquired an entirely different significance. When a young prince walked up to her she said a few words calling him vy and looked at him with an expression of such contempt that if I had been in his place I would have become utterly confused.

Situations like this often happen in Wuthering Heights; they are likely used by Heathcliff to mirror the disparity between the verbal symbolism and the underlying social realities. And the

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disparity in rank between Jane and Mr. Rochester is another social context with its fatalistic impact on writing.

Undoubtedly , readers never saw anyone like Heathcliff unless it were Byron or one of Byron’s heroes. If one may quote Charlotte Brontë’s painful dilemna : ‘to create or not to create ‘ characters like Heathcliff , I will perhaps opt for the positive answer since he is at the centre of the whole enigma that surrounds the atmosphere of the novel. We are going to see how harsh Heathcliff’s interactions with other characters are.

‘Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood’s horse; and bring up some wine.’ Heathcliff expresses himself thanks to this ‘compound order’ which denotes to Lockwood that it is the whole establishment of domestic. Normally, taking the animals to the stables and bringing drinks to the master are two totally different tasks usually done by two distinct persons. One would also see in this statement a kind of restriction of wealth or perhaps some misery like the one stated by Molière in L’Avare when the domestic wondered whether Arpagon is addressing the driver or the cook at the moment.

When Lockwood met Heathcliff for the first time , the latter was leaning on the gate. The choice of the term ‘gate’ is effectively significant since it denotes a kind of distance . As mentioned by Rod Mengham( 1989) the two men come from two completely different worlds both socially and geographically. Even their names contrast with each other : Lockwood and Heathcliff - the inside and the outside of the locked door of civilization. Hence

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Lockwood’s forms of address vis-à-vis Heathcliff render all due politeness; moreover he uses a formal style.

Social change and political agitation were marked and on the increase in the very past of Yorkshire throughout the entirety of Brontës ‘s life . It is not only in the violent moods of a great deal of her writing but in the language and structure of her novel that she tackles the problems of destructive conflict between groups of people and of divided loyalties and confusions of purpose within individuals . I am fully persuaded of the need to read Wuthering Heights in the context of local industrialization. 40

Indeed, social and cultural changes are revealed in both novels. Heathcliff disappeared for a while then comes after with a new conception of life dictated by his recent social status and thus he gains power and prestige. Even the language Nelly Dean uses when she addresses him has nothing to do with that of the past because she has now in front of her someone responding to the norms and the conventions of a ‘good society’. And money is at the origin of any social promotion.

One good example of ‘social’ change would be that of Hindley who returned to Wuthering Heights in mysterious possession of ‘culture ’ , a fact which is indicated by his speaking and dressing quite differently from the one he used to use . On the other hand it has been agreed that :

polite society was shocked at the notion of Rochester’s attempt at bigamous marriage, his casual discussion of

40 Emily Brontë, 2000 :vii.

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his former mistress with his daughter’s teenage governess and the improper behaviour and language of course of both master and governess during their courtship.

Even Gaskell, the most ardent of Charlotte’s champions, would not allow her unmarried daughters to read Jane Eyre for fear that they might be tainted by what one reviewer called its ‘total ignorance of the habits of the society, ‘a great coarseness of taste, and a heathenish doctrine of religion’.41 The only solution for these four gifted girls was to build themselves a ‘dream world’ where they found escape from the discipline and restraints of ordinary life. This dream is of course , the romantic saga of love, war, passion, and revenge that the Brontës had been writing together for nearly one decade. As if writing was a refuge from reality although they were all inspired by their reading of books and contemporary periodicals actual military campaigns and scientific expeditions. (Heather Glen, 2002:34). Besides, John Whitley42 points at the fact that Emily Brontë writes with

an imagination that is essentially melodramatic, that operates among radical contradictions and renders reality indirectly or poetically. Like Cooper, she is inspired ‘ by the sheer romantic exhilaration of escape from culture itself, into a world where nature is dire, terrible and beautiful, where human values are personal, alien and renunciatory, where contradictions are to be resolved only by death....

On the other hand the popularity of Jane Eyre results from many reasons; first it contains Gothic elements like horror, mystery, the medieval Castle setting in addition to the rise of an orphan girl

41 Elizabeth Gaskel, quoted in Heather Glen, 2002 :35. 42 In the introduction of Emily Brontë, 2000:vii.

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who had to face strange events where she finds herself obliged to make use of an odd language to protect herself. In fact Mrs. Reed declares that Jane talked to her like something mad, or like a fiend: ‘ No child ever spoke or looked as she did’. She forgets that she addresses Jane using the kinship expression ‘ my daughters’ instead of ‘ your cousins’ when talking about her own children Elisa and Georgiana. And this makes all the difference in the following utterance: ‘ you have seen my daughters?’ The choice of this term serves to make the social relationship looser and looser in order to keep distance from Jane. So very little time to spend with her aunt Mrs. Reed, thus very few gatherings.

Moreover, the Puritan code has a great impact on early and mid-Victorian literature and on England in general. Since novels were commonly read aloud in family gatherings, there was a need to avoid embarrassing topics to be heard by young girls and the novelist is not supposed to ignore these taboos. The narrowness of the puritan middle-class mind had a big role in shaping the novelist’s expressions. The Brontë diverged from the general rule both in style and subject matter. What makes the particularity of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre is the fact that even when they deal with children, their ‘cry’ is never mentioned; for instance, in Elizabeth Barret’s poem or in Charles Dickens’ novels children are obliged to toil in mines and factories in order to survive. Yet, they manage to transmit another message: how persecution feels to a young girl, even if people are rarely so cruel in life, when we consider Jane at ten.

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Language may be a reflection of social environments and one has to consider the relationship between individual words in the lexicon and the social meaning they reflect in real life. Social changes may also cause a change in linguistic behaviour. It has been said that after the French Revolution (1789), the Comite de Salut Publique condemned the use of the pronoun ‘vous’ in addressing one person, because it was considered as a feudal linguistic residue. The Comite decreed rather the use of a mutual ‘tu’ as a form of address , because the ‘tu’ was felt to be more in keeping with the egalitarian ideal of the time. Moreover to translate this vocabulary into other languages may require the use of expressions, sometimes whole sentences to be faithful to the appropriate form of address. Other examples may illustrate how various environments are reflected in language, and may also provide evidence against the extreme version of the Sapir-Worf Hypothesis which see language as the shaper of one’s ideas and a guide for one’s mental activity.

4.5. The power of language in dialogues, in songs, tales.

Language that means of communication between human beings , is one of those ‘ human artefacts ‘ whereby a culture finds expression and reproduction . It has a semantic and grammatical fit with culture of its users. To have an idea about more or less complete definition of language let us just consider Guy Cook’s (1995 : 4 ) opinion when he states that language is viewed in various theories as a genetic inheritance , a mathematical system , a social fact , the expression of individual identity , the outcome of dialogic interaction , a social semiotic , the intuitions of native

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speakers , the sum of attested data , a collection of memorized chunks , a rule – governed discrete combinatory system , or electrical activation in a distributed network .

Cook added : “ But to do justice to language , we do not have to express allegiance to one or some of these competing - and aspiringly hegemonic - views .”

Recognition of complicity implies that the object of inquiry is not reducible to description of one of these theories , but needs to invoke several at once ( even contradictory ones ) . As a result we do not have to choose since language can be all of these things at once .

Even when Bessie , the nurse in Charlotte Brontë ‘ s novel sings to the Jane the little girl , the choice of the song is not fortuitous . It reflects exactly the same situation in which Jane is at the moment of despair . It serves to add more sadness and less relief to the poor persecuted girl because she feels as if she were in jail with no escape from the painful state of mind . With the help of stories and songs, Bessie manages to teach Jane to find comfort after her trauma when she has been locked in the red-room. Moreover, one may ask himself if the song (or the tale) has not some interesting relevance to the total context in which it occurs and it has to be considered as a speech act within a speech event.

Here the tragedy lies in the lack of power of the human being to interrupt a chain of disasters and that he has no will to do it . One

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may remember perhaps Créon shouting: ‘ Toutes choses échappent à ma prise; sur ma tête un destin insoutenable s’est appesanti.’43 and his servant added that he must not hope anything, they cannot free themselves from Evil by Destiny.

Fate, like that of the Greek Tragedy or in Shakespeare’s drama and the relation I am making, concerning the climax and the end of both novels, are one of the main themes that disturbed me for a long time. It is sufficiently made obvious that the tragic hero is human; he is a man with as many weaknesses as any human being, and therefore, we feel not only’ admiration’ but ‘pride’, too. So the equilibrium of tragedy lies in the balance of ‘Terror’ with pride. The feeling of pride comes when the hero knows his fate. Moreover in the kind of prose writing, I have noticed that the supernatural is always present to enhance the harshness of the Haworth landscape, its impact on its inhabitants, and above all the pathetic fallacy with human life and its wildest manifestations of the souls, passion and expressiveness.

The power of language is also shown in interactions such as dialogues where a whole social or cultural system is denoted. In fact the few words uttered by Mrs. Fairfax serve as a warning to any woman who would dare expect to be integrated or in a higher status of which she would not belong according to the beliefs of society. Talking about Mr. Rochester, she naturally addressed Jane this way: ‘Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governesses’; brief and concise and no word has to be added unless she would like to break the conventional sociolinguistic rules.

43 Sophocles, Antigone, 1965 :59.

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Another example of dialogue where the power of language is made acute, is when Heathcliff declares to Catherine that she committed emotional suicide long before. In the pathos of his account of his ruined life and his cheated passion, he cries out in desolation :

You teach me how cruel you’ve been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart ,Cathy ? I have not one word of comfort - you deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me and cry ; and wring out my kisses and tears. They’ll blight you - they’ll damn you. You loved me - then what right had you to leave me ? What right - answer me -for the poor fancy you felt for Linton ? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it - and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live ? What kind of living will it be when you - oh, God ! Would you like to live with your soul in the grave ? (Wuthering Heights pp 197-8).

The repetition of the personal pronoun ‘you’ serves to aggravate the mistake made by Catherine when she denied her passion by using an inappropriate language to the actual situation. Consequently, one may understand that for Heathcliff there remains for him just one absolute reality : an absurd and desolate future. Furthermore, the profoundly romantic aspects of Heathcliff’s personality rise to the surface when Nelly Dean tells him that Catherine has died : ‘He dashed his head against the knotted trunk ; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears’.44 He begs that he may be haunted by Catherine.45

44 Wuthering Heights, pp 320-21. 45 Stephen Coote, 1985:47.

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4.6. Intentional or Pathetic fallacy in the Brontës ’ writing .

When an utterance is used in a certain context, the effective communication requires that speakers and audiences agree both on the meaning of words and on the social significance. It had been agreed , as Younquist (1989:iiix) put it so elegantly that

Certain post – structural and Marxist methods of interpretation have so diminished the role of the artist in the act of creation that art seems to arise without the intervention individual will or desire … The strange notion has occurred to some that there is no such thing as an author , that language speaks without a mouthpiece , or that when poets compose , history really does all the work while it is unquestionably true that history shapes an author ‘ s aims and ought therefore to be studied , the extent to which history determines literary activity is a question that requires the greatest critical tact even to raise . We must not discount , for reasons of fashion or convenience , the role that the individual plays in producing a work of art . ”

In fact by restoring the Brontës to the Brontës’ studies we restore the individual to the act of creation , but with the awareness that the biography of the mind cannot be reduced to the historical circumstances . To restore Emily Brontë to Emily Brontë ‘s studies is to consider inevitably the character of the writer ‘ s own mental life . But deviating from the human norms demands all the more attention , since the norm acquires meaning primarily by being compromised . In other words ‘ you never know what is enough unless you know what is more

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than enough’, as it has been said in Blake’ s poems . At this point, one may wonder if it is possible to follow both divergences when Reason and Heart are constantly in conflict .

Like Byron the Brontës exploited the fascination of the forbidden and the appeal of the terrifying ‘satanic hero’.In my opinion, when mentioning the term ‘forbidden’, has Catherine to consider Heathcliff as an adopted brother or as a passionate lover?At this stage Emily Brontë was sensitive to the ambivalence of the human nature if not human experience – to mingling, at their highest intensity, of pleasure and pain, to the destructiveness of love and to the ‘erotic quality of the longing of death.’ These phenomena had already been crudely explored by many writers of terror tales and gothic fiction of the 18th Century and their picturesque backgrounds of England. Following Stephen Coote (Brontë,1986:44 ) who notes that Heathcliff :

is as powerful and amoral as the forces of nature with which he is often compared. He is both worldly and profoundly romantic. Love and hatred merge in him and both are extreme. His origins are unknown. This gives him not only the pathos of the orphan but also an air of mystery that deepens the suspicion that he is connected to the devil.

In order to put the above quotation in simpler words, my own analysis- of the strongest images that emerge from that powerful language- is necessary. The two epithets ‘powerful’ and ‘amoral’ are attributed to both Heathcliff and the ‘forces of nature’. Moreover ‘powerful’ may suggest that the other even main characters can only be weak and ‘amoral’. This conducts us to the

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extremeness of mastering and managing oneself’ s power and will. No moral nor even religion can stop this animal like instinct of destruction present in the character of Heathcliff.

In addition to this comparison, one may wonder which ‘nature’ Emily Brontë mentions; perhaps that of storm or defeat And which forces? Here lies all the sweetness of the secret of the particularities of each region, with its specific climate, landscape and fame, thus specific themes and choice of words. Heathcliff is both ‘worldly’ and ‘romantic’ which sounds like opposing reason to heart i.e. the reasons of the Reason and the reasons of Heart as it has been so superbly illustrated in this famous quotation : ‘ Le Coeur a ses raisons que la raison n’a pas.’ Perhaps also materialism as opposed to spiritualism since ‘ worldly’ means down-to-earth whereas ‘romantic’ supposes evasion, imagination and freedom of mind, if not, it has the connotation of the supremacy of feelings which are sometimes able to solve problems and ‘ to answer questions ‘ if I may refer to transcendentalism in American Literature.

At the same time Heathcliff possesses magnanimity, humanity and grandeur of passion which echoes Shakespeare’s great characters . Emily Brontë demonstrates her uncanny psychological grasp and her deeply rooted knowledge of the internal side of man thanks to her elevated metaphors, terrifying images and troubling scenes which as we know, resemble only great moments in Shakespeare’s drama, not to mention Racine’s Phaedra or even Sophocles’s Antigone.

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Moreover, being able to choose the right road to follow in our inevitable itinerary is quite a utopia , since man is at the same time free and imprisoned when confronted with many directions in his ephemeral journey . Robert Frost’s ‘road not taken’ reflects precisely this painful dilemma where one finds himself unable to travel both roads if not more . Hence , the situation more disturbing when he adds ‘and sorry I could not travel both’. The same feeling of despair with a melancholy mood of a life that had not been lived , is felt when Catherine Earnshaw (in Wuthering Heights) finds it hard to make her decisive choice upon which her whole life will depend . Whom has she to marry ; Heathcliff ? and it would ‘ degrade ‘ her ; she is torn between her love for him and her desire to become a gentlewoman if she decides to marry Edgar Linton .

In the scene of her confession to Nelly Dean, her anguish at her decision and the true nature of her passion are vividly shown . Catherine is bound body and soul to Heathcliff, to the moors and to earthly passion. Her speech reaches the heights of poetry as she describes the universe that is contained in Heathcliff.

She then declares :

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath – a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but as my own being …’ ( Wuthering Heights, p. 122).

‘There is nothing sweet or sentimental about this.’ (Stephen Coote, 1985 :50). Catherine knows perfectly well how dark and how

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sinister Heathcliff is. She recognizes that love has its darkness and brutality and she accepts these, without questioning. In this scene she lays bare her soul and then admits she has offered her love to the wrong man. She does not marry Edgar simply for his money but she refuses Heathcliff because he has not got any. The situation becomes more dramatic when Heathcliff forces her to recognize this when he rounds on her.Nelly Dean compares Catherine to a thorny rose and the Lintons to honeysuckle.

With the return of Heathcliff the marriage is destroyed. Catherine is thrown into the wildest excitement by his presence and her girlish high spirits are now seen as the emotional instability of the mature woman. She recognizes clearly Heathcliff’s fierce, pitiless, wolfish’s nature but her attraction to him is irresistible and she is contemptuous of Edgar’s mildness and decency . What Catherine suffers now are the effects of her refusal to free herself to the flood of her emotions. The love and the passion inside her can find no easy outlet. Instead, they turn in upon themselves, and bring her to the point breakdown. She is feverish and her thwarted passion is kelling her. She cries out :

Her mind is set on death and her appearance has altered so that ‘there seemed unearthly beauty in the change’. But if Catherine has changed, she has not softened. There is a ‘wild vindictiveness’ in her face and also in her works. Her accusations of Heathcliff’s future infidelitv and forgetfulness of her torture him, and as she looks despairingly round the world she is leaving, she realizes that her sufferings will continue beyond the grave (p. 196). The spontaneous, passionate tomboy of a little girl has become a fearsome and unworldly wraith. Even death is no

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delivrance for her and she seems to live on in a half life as a ghost torturing Heathcliff to near madness and death.

Moreover , when she regrets to be an adult, she probably would like to go back the whole path already chosen ; thus she laments

Oh ! I’m burning ! I wish I were out of doors – I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy and free…...and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them ! Why am I so changed ? Why does my blood rush into hell of tumult at a few words ? I’m sure I should be myself were I once again among the heather on those hills …. (Wuthering Heights p. 163).

Catherine is wondering about herself being ‘so changed’; and why does her ‘blood rush into hell of tumult’ for just a few words heard? In other words, the effect of language on people can never be the same at different times and it is for this reason that the setting is paramount not only for the production of speech but for the meaning carried by speech as well.

This exclamation coming out from the deepest inner of the heroine could symbolise a life that has not been lived , things not experienced or perhaps a ‘ word ’ that has not been ‘ said ‘ which would have deviated the whole character’s path.

The whole tragedy lies in the fact that Catherine and Heathcliff went from ‘ Innocence to Experience ‘ , if one may borrow William Blake’ s vision , and this is the lot of any other human being. They lose that world of paradise to enter the thorny one . Likely , the notion of Adam and Eve thrown from paradise

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to the earth is omnipresent and that eternal regret for childhood takes on the obsessive nostalgia . All this suffering is expressed thanks to a highly elaborate language just as the speech used by the main character.

Let us just analyse some acts produced for instance by Heathcliff when Mr. Lockwood came to see him in his house: “Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,’ he interrupted, wincing ‘I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it - walk in!’

As Emily Brontë herself pointed it, the ‘ walk in’ was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed rather, ‘go to the Deuce’. Even the degree of opening of the mouth is revealing that Heathcliff is not welcoming Lockwood; here all the process of the place and the manner of articulation is involved, not to mention the quality of the vowels. One may should be aware of how the manner of producing speech sounds can totally alter the meaning of the meaning of a ‘parole’. Moreover ‘the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathising movement to the words’, as the narrator himself asserts. The inanimate object was caught by the master who did not pull out his hand from the gate until Mr Lockwood’s horse’s breast pushed it. Once more, the function of the ‘walk in’, produced with closed teeth, is to show Heathcliff’s impoliteness and carelessness towards Mr. Lockwood as someone to whom he is not supposed to be respectful. The emotional state of the speaker when he produces an utterance may affect his speech; Heathcliff is nervous, excited and disappointed. Therefore when addressing

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Lockwood his speech is connotative. For psychological reasons, the term ‘in’ would perhaps mean ‘out’ in the phrase ‘walk in’.

In the opening chapter of the novel Mr. Lockwood explains what is meant by ‘ Wuthering Heights’: The name of this removed ‘dwelling’ denotes a combination of a ‘geographical inaccessibility’ with ‘linguistic unfamiliarity’. The choice of words like: ‘tumult’, ‘stormy weather’, ‘bracing ventilation’, ‘north wind’ is not fortuitous. And the personification of the thorns with their limbs is added to the harshness of the atmosphere. The verb ‘defended’ used by the end of the struggle of two inanimate things, has a strong connotation. Yet, there is a big difference between them, because one is static whereas the other is dynamic; two forces are facing each other. Moreover, the Yorkshiredialect society confirmed the definition of the word ‘wuthering’; it means ‘blustery’ which probably denotes also that characters, being rough and violent, act and speak in a forceful but rather boastful way like the noise made by violent wind or waves and blowy and stormy weather.

Another example of pathetic fallacy could be during lunch time when the business of eating is being concluded, and no one uttered a word of sociable conversation . Mr. Lockwood approached a window to examine the weather and there was but a sorrowful sight . He saw a ‘dark night coming down prematurely , sky and hills mingled in one bitter of wind and suffocating snow. He did not think it possible for him to get home this night without a guide and could not help exclaiming . Furthermore, the roads will soon be buried ; and if they were bare , he could scarcely distinguish a foot in advance , as stated by Brontë herself. The vision is not the same if

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one had to compare this situation of the window with that of Gustave Flaubert in Emma Bovary ; not only the context is different but also the situation and the circumstances as well .

In fact in the former situation , they had finished eating and silence is still pervading Wuthering Heights . Nobody said a word that could lead to a ‘ sociable conversation ’ moreover , when looking through the window , Mr. Lockwood noticed the harshness of the weather : it was getting darker and darker ; even the wind and the snow were contributing to the suffocation of the atmosphere . Thus , it was impossible for him to find his way since he already imagined the roads covered with snow . Here , one may remind the window mentioned by Gustave Flaubert when Emma used the window for another function , that is dream . The tragedy of the monotony of life is conveyed through the images that are seen throughout the horizon and thus make the young lady dream of escape .

Instead , for Mr Lockwood there is no room for reveries as he scanned his horizon to get to Thruscross Grange . And the window is the symbol of no expectation. It is rather one of enclosure thus of imprisonment as well as a longing for a liberation. All these images of space and silence are combined throughout the novel and serve to enhance the characters’ thoughts and in this case to broaden the surroundings and contexts .

As a result peace cannot be there , since ideas cannot be the same in different places. Moreover, social and cultural contexts are determinant for the choice of our words. We cannot ignore that linguists of all persuasions and other scholars are interested in the

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mechanisms by which social and cultural factors affect our language as clarified by Leonard Bloomfield (1933). Furthermore, linguistic constraints operate largely below the level of consciousness; thus speakers themselves cannot be expected to provide adequate explanations for their own verbal behaviour.

4.7. Influence of Victorian society on the Brontës’ writing.

Plausibly, one starting point is to focus on the writers and see if what we can learn about them lelps to answer interpretative questions raised about these two novels: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. There are many ways of doing this. One can engage in what is called biographical criticism in which one tries to learn as much as possible about the life of the writer and then tries to read off the meaning of some utterances from what was going on around the time of writing. Some critics believe that there is no reason to suppose that a poem, or more generally a work of art, is a direct expression of what is going on in the artist’s life - because it might be that the artist is just as likely to distance her work from her life in the act of artistic creation.

Henceforth, it will be impossible to find non speculative connections between the Brontës’ biography within a Victorian society and their writing, that is producing the precise words, exact paroles and appropriate speech acts. Finally, even such connections were found between the writer’s life and words, these are likely to be private connections and certainly ones inaccessible to most readers as confirmed by her biographer Winifred Gérin (1979). In fact, readers engage in a variety of mental processes in an effort to

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comprehend information from written texts from novels. They focus on constructing meaning from passages, and relate what they read to their previous existing knowledge and schemata is activated at this moment.

Analogous to biographical criticism is an approach that seeks to discover in events contemporary with the writer a key that unlocks the meaning of the language used in a novel, let us say Jane Eyre, or at least gives to it ‘ a new historical resonance’ or a social and cultural one. Thus these two novels have been chosen preponderantly for a sociolinguistic study and it calls for special explanation . These two writers have been crucially influential upon other women writers of their time whose ‘ voices are those of reserve or indirection ’ as Stout says about Jane Austin ( Brontë, 1990: ix ) . Stout adds that

novels , like people , have personalities of their own , some are more outgoing , more assertive , than others . ’ Some play by the rules while others quietly subvert the rules and some proclaim their freedom from all rules . Some speak politely ; some yell and swear . Some are deeper than they seem . As we talk with various people , we weigh their words differently , we listen with different levels of attention . With some people we take into account the conditions - recent grieves , old grudges , significant hearers standing nearby - that may be restricting what they say . With some , more than others , the raised eyebrow , the shrug , the little smile that betrays an unspoken meaning . the weigh of the tacit is equally present as we read . we hold a bundle of paper , we look at words printed on the page , but our reading , if it is skilful , also takes into account the pressures that may have restricted or shaped

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what was written down .”

One would take into consideration what the majority of critics noticed about the prevailing atmosphere of anxiety felt by Victorians due to the various changes in society . Many writers affirm the fact that the English countryside incarnated the lost paradise for them , a place where life was simpler , purer and safer than the polluted cities , generated by the industrial revolution . Perhaps they believed that cities were created by Man not God . In my opinion it is valid for any other country , since many travellers put the stress on those places not yet affected by the modernity . This way of living awake an intense feeling of nostalgia .

Once more, to select biographical and historical background which has direct or indirect bearing on this writing will probably add to the comprehension of any social or cultural context. This will then add to the interpretation of language. Sometimes emotional events in the writer’s family would have been told over and over again so that it will provide the author with real life experience For his characters. One vivid example would be when Dickens and his friends made the same journey down the river that Pip and Magwitch made in their escape bid.

Any biography is certain to include the most ‘traumatic events’ of the Brontës life such as the ‘sickening shame’ of their brother Branwell who a woman desperately and became addicted to drugs and alcohol till he died and this is reflected in Catherine’s brother in fiction. As stated by Gérin, all this ‘penetrated’ the depths of

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their writing and ‘haunted them for the rest of their lives’. These writers managed to put significant words in the mouths of degraded and demoralised victims powerless to help themselves, because society had cast them aside like for instance Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Jane in Jane Eyre. As a result, all the characters speak as they have been cast. The best example is probably Adèle using French.

In addition to tis fact, the connotation of the setting is vital for the success of this feeling. The reader may not forget that Mr. Lockwood explains what is meant by ‘wuthering heights’, in the opening chapter of the novel. In fact, the place is removed, a real ‘geographical inaccessibility’ with ‘linguistic unfamiliarity’. The name of this isolated dwelling denotes a whole range of strange images; the choice of words like: tumult, stormy weather, bracing ventilation, nord wind, is not fortuitous. And the personification of the thorns with their limbs is added to the harshness of the atmosphere. The verb ‘defended’ used in the description has a strong connotation; we have the impresssion of a struggle of two inanimate things; yet, the diference does exist between them, one is static while the other is dynamic: the two forces are facing each other and nobody can see the winner.

Paul Younquist ( 1989 : iiix ) talking about madness and Blake’s myth wrote ‘ but the flaw of his genius includes something extraordinary piquant , a tendency towards the irrational that gives the impression of the mental eccentricity ’. He describes Blake ‘ s mental health as such ; however , according to me and when it is about the Brontës ‘ , I would rather consider their visionary art

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which is crucial to reach a deep understanding of the mythical symbolism not only in Wuthering Heights but in Jane Eyre as well .

The Brontë sisters made ‘madness’ a central subject of their writing and one may just remember that some writers’ lives end in madness as their characters did . Moreover , any one who has read Wuthering Heights would feel obliged to endorse Heathcliff ’ s mental health . It occurs to readers that there might be reason to consider this character mad, or at least ‘ possessed of a mentality atypical of the human norm ’. Even Emily Brontë was a literary genius of a higher order and the language used by her characters in some interactions may reach the level of classic tragedies.

On the other hand , Charlotte for instance , examines the demise of mad one whose social and libidinal desires never reach fulfilment ; the idea of the unachieved is ‘ haunting every character by this tendency to mediate their representations of madness ‘ . Yet , this mad woman is kept at a safe distance controlled and supervised by the lucid person , that is Grace in Jane Eyre who had to shut her in a ‘ tower ‘ . This has not to be forgotten , no freedom is left to madness , no expression is allowed since even when she laughs we have to faint that Grace is laughing to avoid disturbing the other people in the manor by her presence .

The dynamics of mental distress are allowed to become a main preoccupation even for the reader who understands the nature of mental suffering and its personal

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threat . Only by attending closely to the Brontës ‘ personal lives and minds can we appreciate fully their characters evolution in the novels . Yet , death itself is not only an ‘ end ‘ but a means to deliver for instance Catherine , Heathcliff , Mrs. Reed from that inevitable system conceived and built by the character himself .

Yet, in Jane Eyre, the heroine broods on the cause of the hardness of heart. Just remember the episode of the red room. The terrified Jane huddles in the red room, when she is badly treated by the repulsive Mrs Reed then unjustly locked alone in a supposedly haunted room where Mr. Reed died nine years ago. As it gets darker and darker, she becomes more and more frightened. This episode with its intense realism of childhood’s claustrophobia, heightens the portrayal of the persecution. She can no more stand the situation of horror therefore she shouts and begs to be set free. When Mrs Reed is appalled by the noise, she refuses Jane’s demand . From the gossip of the servants who believe that Jane has seen a ghost, she learns the sad story of her parents, who were poor and had married for love.

In my opinion, one may witness the inevitable tragedy of human life always linked with the fear of the unknown, mystery and ghosts, apparitions, hallucinations if not overthrowing visions. In such situations, our reason or our consciousness is defeated by greater strength and this is an indication of taste on the part of Charlotte Brontë. Characters take attributes from the writings of Scott and Byron. The frequency to both writers’ and Milton’s references shows the authors’ s - i.e. Brontë - familiarity with them:

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Margaret Smith considers the frequency of her references to the Bible, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and the poetry of Milton, ‘shows her to be thoroughly familiar with them.’ Smith believes that

Some of ‘her Biblical quotations are very freely adapted, sometimes with satirical intention; but they can give resonance and poignancy, as in the expression of Jane’s despair at the end of volume II: ‘ in truth, “ the waters came into my soul; ... the floods over flowed me” ‘

‘ Charlotte also knew Shakespeare’s plays well; those which most readily came to the mind when she wrote Jane Eyre were Macbeth and Othello’. ‘Byron excited her; Scott she loved’ 46

4.8. The function of dreams and the sociolinguistic meaning of silence .

One may try perhaps to analyse the link between the Brontës as readers before being writers i.e. how they have been influenced by Bunyan , Shakespeare , Milton , Schiller , Scott and Byron. In fact, it has been already said that some parts of Wuthering Heights might have been written by Byron or they are written about him. On these matters we may quote Anne Holker ( 1983 : 94 ) who emphasized that the ‘ theme of the human soul struggling to find righteousness and eventual peace is an echo of Bunyan ‘ s Pilgrim Progress in which everyman makes his way through the world

46 Charlotte Brontë,1983: viii-ix.

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and all its troubles , encountering temptation on the way , yet managing to stick to the windy and thorny path of goodness .

Even dreams have their own functions in the sociological study of writing . Hence , the use of dreams in novels , such as the ones I am trying to analyse , serves to reveal our frustrated will and also it gives us more spatial and temporal freedom . Undoubtedly , it is important to study such aspects of human behaviour or subconscious language and behaviour in dreams . Here the definition of a dream is not just one of a real dream but also the fact of having visions without evolving the state of sleep . Since it is impossible most of the time to demarcate the actual situation we find ourselves in , from the imaginary site we are constantly visiting virtually ; thus we become more absorbed and concentrated elsewhere with psychological effects interwoven with the supernatural events .

One vivid example would probably be Mr. Lockwood ‘ s nightmare when he went to sleep then he began to shout. Heathcliff did not understand what was happening since he believed nobody was allowed to sleep in that deserted room. This event was followed by Heathcliff’ s monologue, the scene where he was shouting and crying and sobbing to the ghost of Catherine. The reason of his dream is perhaps bad tea, bad tempers or because he read the margins of the book he found on the shelf in the mysterious room. Hence, absurdity of facts in dreams reflects sometimes the absurdity of life itself.

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As we can notice, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights contain a lot of significant dreams . Moreover, Jane, the ‘eponymous narrator’ is a frequent day-dreamer; she has been observed in this position by her employer, Mr Rochester until the voice of a servant, Mrs. Fairfax, awakes her and she forces herself to remember that all that very well visions are absolutely unreal. Alan Gordon ( 2004) thinks that : ‘this suppression of day-dreams reflects the trend of Jane learning to suppress her passions over the course of the novel.’

In fact, after a ‘turbulent childhood’, Jane fulfils a Victorian ideal of womanhood; she grows responsible of her life as she completes her education . According to Adams (1985:82) Jane even pays ‘ inordinate attention to the details of her dream life.’ That is vital for her to attempt to mask the ‘raw emotions’ .In order to be an ideal Victorian Lady’ ( Gordon,2004:22) to dream for Jane, provides glimpses into the unconscious life. They also serve as ‘presentiments’ when they are premonitory; their function is that of warning of future events. This fact has been called the use of gothic form of literalizing when Charlotte Brontë makes some aspects of the dreams come true .

Jane’s emotions are reflected in her dream when Mr. Rochester transmits this message mysteriously over dozens of miles: ‘Jane! Jane! I am coming wait for me ! In Jane Eyre one may also witness such ambiguous situation where the hero is able to differentiate distinctly between waking life and dreaming . One vivid example could be when Jane heard the ‘demonic laugh’( Homans, 1997:147) of Bertha Mason and Mrs. Fairfax told her ‘ you must have been dreaming’ . Such dreams serve ‘ complex functions’ such

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as forewarning Jane of trouble or good fortune, or just serving as symbols when the presentation of the conflict between the erotic self and the commited self are transposed in the dream; following Homans, I can now assert that :

Despite their prevalence, Jane tries to separate her dreams from her waking life, and in her novel, Brontë maintains sturdy barriers between England and ‘dreamland’.

Consequently, Nelly Dean could not understand Catherine’s language when she is addressing her; she did not know, as she said, whether Catherine is speaking in her dream or talking directly to her. The reason of using such a kind of language is that she is dying:

Nelly asked: ‘The black press? Where is that? You are talking in your Sleep!’ Catherine replied: ‘It’s against the wall, as it always is. It does appear odd -I see a face in it!’ Nelly, resuming her seat, and looping up the curtain that she might watch her: ‘There is no press in the room, and never was.’ Catherine enquired: ‘ Don’t you see that face?’ And say what I could, I was incapable of making her comprehend it to be her own; so I rose and covered it with a shawl. It is behind there still! She pursued anxiously.

This disturbing language that any one would produce when one confronts the end of life has been evoked many times by psychologists. They believe that the axis of the lived world shifts, and everything is altered. Shortly, what once seemed familiar becomes strange. Consequently, Catherine could not even recognize her own face reflected.

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Moreover, dreams are used as a literary device in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Thanks to the insertion of dream episodes, the writer - and perhaps also the reader - is able to analyse the psychological state of the characters during their personal development . One can cite a lot of examples if one just considers the different speech situations involved in both novels . For example, of their characters was the popular painter John Martin, the prime minister of England Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington and the eminent physician John Robert Hume.

The moorland, for instance, is seen as romantically inspirited or as uncouth or impractical . Even the Brontës are considered as a myth. Myth, of course , is a Protean word. It can mean a traditional story, passed down through a culture and available for endless re- working, such as the Greek myths or the legend of King Arthur. This is the sense in which Patsy Stoneman( 2005: hopes to consider ‘the Brontë’s myth’. There is, however, a difference between mythical figure who had no historical existence, like the Greek gods , or whose origins are lost in time , like King Arthur , and relatively recent figures whose history can be defined by documentary evidence. In fact there are social and psychological reasons why such ‘myths’ do not die. The ‘myth of the Brontës sad, silent childhood was fed, in an age where orphans were commonplace, by contemporary readers’ knowledge of other sad, silent children .So, although the precise stories told about the Brontës may have been falsehoods, these ‘myths’ often prove to have a historical validity.

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Other myths are compounded by material from the Brontës’ novels. Consequently very few readers of Jane Eyre are able to distinguish between Jane’s experiences at Lowood and those of the young Brontës at Cowan Bridge, or even see the point of doing so. Moreover, the confusion is deeply felt when one has to make the distinction between the very landscape in Haworth with its cemetery, hills and moors and that of the setting of Wuthering Heights . Here, again, a ‘fictionalised’ version of the Brontë childhood takes on a generalised truth .

The situation is rather one of asphyxia and enclosure thus of imprisonment as well as a longing for a liberation. All these images of space and silence are combined throughout the novel and serve to enhance the characters’ thoughts and in this case to broaden the surrounding and contexts. Thus peace cannot be there since ideas cannot be the same in different places.; social and cultural contexts are determinant for the choice of our words. Not to mention part of our whole behaviour i.e. laughter or smile. In fact Heathcliff smiled when Mr. Lockwood asked if Hareton was his son:

“ And this young man is ____

Not my son, assuredly!” The function of this smile can replace a whole complete reply. Moreover he interrupted him and finished himself the question but this time with a negation, ‘not my son’ and the adverb ‘assuredly’ is added to denote the strength of the impossibility to attribute such a paternity to him. The behaviour of this pleasant family circle involved Lockwood’ feeling of being out of space there. He tried to explain that he just wanted someone to

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tell him his way, not to show it. Here Heathcliff’s statement is clear because he already knew he cannot demand more ; the paradigm ‘ show’ instead of ‘tell’ will definitely change the meaning of the whole structure. Hence I want you to tell me my way’, is totally different from ‘ to show it’. Here the ear had to function not the eye and the feet. The message had to be transmitted from mouth to ear and not in motion .

Moreover, silence in both novels should be considered as an invitation to interactive reading and Cage (1961:7) makes the analogy between musical ‘silences’ and ‘empty’ spaces of modern sculpture and architecture. ‘The concept of silence or openness of meaning- structures’ has also invaded the ‘study of avant-garde music’. Consequently, one may assert that the ‘speaking silence’ or the narrative silence of Nelly Dean or Mr. Lockwood or Mrs. Fairfax, serve as a moral index if not ethical criterion in writing. In fact, sometimes Nelly Dean ‘casts herself as a purveyor of wise and saws’ like in ‘ Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves’ or ‘a good heart will help you to a bonny face.’

Other times she speaks and then she keeps silent just after, in order to transmit meanings conveyed by concise allusions. When it occurs in writing, it may also serve as a stragedy for avoiding presentation of the problem or the conflict stated just before. Cage added that silences may be placed for effect; they ‘may represent very conscious manipulation of the expressive medium’; silences are sometimes imposed by social constraints of various sorts. Besides what should or should not be said and by whom and who to keep reticent is but a matter of morality, valid in one culture and not in the

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other, if not in one situation and not in the other. As Heathcliff says to Nelly about Catherine ‘ I guess by her silence, as much as anything what she feels.’Here silence is expressing more than words can do.

McGuire (1985:95) examines specific moments in several of Shakespeare’s plays at which

the printed text allows the reader or director or actor such great latitude of interpretation that the result is not simply a nuanced version of a text but a distinct collaborative recreation, perhaps at great variance from what custom has dictated or led us to assume as ‘the’ meaning.

Consequently, one may also quote Steiner ( 1967:49) who remembers hearing someone say, after a performance of ‘ Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima’, by Cristof Penderecki that:

The reason he did not applaud was not dislike of its experimental style but a sense that the only way to receive such music as the ‘Threnody’ is in silence. A silent reception, presumably, would express the hearer’s grief for the victims and perhaps a moral judgment on the atrocity itself.

The ‘absoluteness of silence’ amid our noisy modernity exists. As Picard (1952:22) said so eloquently:

Still like some old, forgotten animal from the beginning of time, silence towers above all the puny world of noise; but as a living animal, not an extinct species, it lies in wait, and we can see its broad back sinking ever deeper among the briers and bushes of the world of noise.

Back again to the Victorian society who sees the supposed ideal woman as someone ‘passive, docile, and above all selfless’

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(Moi,1985:58). Her language is expected to be ‘more restrained, less loud, less public, and less abandoned than men’s’( Borker,1980:38). As soon as she is defined as someone who ‘has a story to tell’ she becomes’ monster woman’. That Victorian repression and its associated qualities are empowering. It actually heightens interior life energically and thus the phenomenon of the silencing of women - more general than the specific culture in which it is demonstrated – is interpreted as something other than an ‘unmitigated ill, because women have been able to react adaptively and to make creative use of an unjust social situation. The best example would be Jane’s confession to Mr. Rochester:

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need excercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer ; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creature to say that they ought to confuse themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.It is thoughtless to condemn them, or to laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

Later on, when Jane thought of leaving Mr. Rochester, Emily Brontë introduces silence once more in the dialogue between the two characters. Mr. Rochester asked: ‘ why are you silent, Jane?’ And There was a terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning. ‘One dear word comprised my intolerable duty – ‘ Depart!’ This is what Jane was planning for her future but unfortunately, her interlocutor had no clear idea about her decision. Jane herself felt

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that ‘grasp’ of the ‘hand of fiery iron’ due to the insistence of Mr. Rochester’s repetition of ‘Jane’. Then, the conversation goes on:

Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise – “I will be yours, Mr. Rochester.” Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours. Another long silence. Jane, recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down With grief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror – for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising- Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another? I do. Jane ( bending towards and embracing me), do you mean it?

On the other hand, throughout Emily Brontë’s novel there is a combination of light and darkness, storm and tranquillity which pervades the atmosphere and is sometimes expressed with an exceptional silence such as in the following passage in chapter 11; the narrator is Nelly Dean:

I came to a stone where the highway branches off on to the moor at your left hand; a rough sand pillar, with the letters W.H. cut on its north side, on the east G., and on the southwest T.G. It serves as guide-post to the Grange, the Heights and village. The sun shone yellow on its grey head, reminding me of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child’s sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favourite

spot twenty years before. I gazed long at the weather-worn block, and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles, which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things; and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate

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seated on the withered turf: his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate.

Although Hindley’s son, Hareton is walking hand in hand with Nelly, he is far away from the events taking place in her mind. This kind of silence where no utterance is produced, is capable of speaking volumes of the passing of time. Hence, the shells and pebbles are still there and they function as a ‘ homely reminder of lost childhood’ when one cannot forget the crucial fact that Hindley was Nelly’s playmate twenty years before.

4.9. Conclusion

Two narrators are telling the story; in the first person narrative everything is heard, experienced and seen through the eyes and the senses of the two narrators. In fact, Nelly Dean’s style is intimate and she takes the listener into confidence and sometimes discusses strengths and weaknesses with incredible understanding. Even the thoughts and the feelings of the other characters of the novel are known to the reader. Moreover, the authors being themselves natives of the moors had ‘their lot been cast in a town’, doubtless their writings, If they had written at all, ‘would have possessed another character’.47 Garrod manages to summarize everything in this short passage:

The wild moors of the north of England…, the language, the manners, the very dwellings and the household customs of the scattered inhabitants of those districts, must be to such readers in a great

47 Garrod in Brontë, 1972: viii.

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measure unintelligible, and- where intelligible- repulsive – Men and women who, perhaps, naturally very calm, and with feelings moderate in degree,… will hardly know what to make of the rough, strong utterance….48

As it has been said, we can hear, taste, smell, and we can even feel ‘a gentle pressure of the hand’. In both novels the majority of the characters overacted in sensational behaviour; their language is denoting that they have been released from the constraints of the society in the Victorian period. The reader believes even abnormality without querying the possibility of such a fact, or such a life and he accepts the numerous coincidences, realising that they are part of the novel. For example the coincidence of the dream about Mr Rochester and Jane’s trip to the manor to save him or as many critics noticed, when Heathcliff left for three years and returned back to become the owner of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.

It is important to study such aspects of human behaviour or subconscious behaviour. Dreams exhibit a combination of psychological effects interwoven with the supernatural events. They may serve as speech acts within a specific situation. They also denote the complexity of the structure of language. We are made to hear distinctly the voice of the narrator, Mr. Lockwood or Nelly Dean and the vitality of the language is apparent in the character’s imagination. Sometimes, we feel the contribution of Tabitha Ackroyd, the local woman who gave faithful domestic service to the Brontës for many years; she knew stories of Grimshaw’s dramatic dealings

48 Ibid.

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with sinners.49 She retailed them to the children who remembered and reflected some traits in their writing.

49 David Daiches in Brontë, 1975: 7.

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General Conclusion

Our students should be aware of the presence in - for instance British Literature- of Standard English going hand in hand with many other ‘Englishes, if we can use the expression. This makes the whole flavour of language when no ‘low’ variety is translated into its counter-part which is the ‘High’ one, because in the same culture we find many others, perhaps called sub-cultures. Concerning Standard English, the pronounciation of the vowel in ‘round’ is a diphthong, but in Yorkshire dialect it is a monophthong, ‘ah’. Here are some examples: ‘ahr’, ‘bahn’, ‘daht’ The ‘u’ of ‘come’, ‘up’, ‘sup’ is broad, approximating to ‘coom’ ‘oop’ ‘soop’.

The Brontës note some diphtongal vowels where standard English has long single sounds : ‘fooil’ for ‘fool’, ‘gooid’ for ‘good’, ‘Looard’ for ‘Lord’. Generally speaking, Yorkshire vowels tend to be fuller, more open, and made further back in the mouth than in standard English. Thus Emily writes ‘fowk’ for ‘folk’, ‘ owld’ for ‘old’, ‘noa’ ( approximating to ‘naw’ ) for ‘no’, ‘yoak’ ( ‘yawk’) for ‘yoke’. Initial ‘h’ is often dropped by dialect speakers, but the Brontës do not usually indicate this.

In addition, if we consider other phonological features such as intonation, one may quote Anne Wichmann (2004:230) when she addressed those who study verbal communication; she told them that intonation can convey many nuances of meaning. We may add that when a written instance is presented with a description relating some emotions of the speaker’s voice or such correlates, it becomes easier for the reader to imagine the real situation. Thus, some features of

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the voice are ‘direct correlates of the emotional or physical state of speaker, such as tiredness, anger’ or being friendly if not rude. This is partly due to the interaction between what is said, how it is said, and the context in which it is said. Then, the demarcation between semantics and pragmatics is that while the former is concerned with the abstract level of language, the latter is actually functioning at the concrete level: a branch of linguistics studying the use that interlocutors make of language in communicative concrete situations.

Wichmann ( 2004) gives the example of the meaning of ‘please’; she shows how intonation can change this word from a ‘routine expression of courtesy to an urgent plea or an emphatic demand’: therefore, intonation contributes to a wide range of meanings. To make a parallel between this real fact and the language used in both novels I am trying to analyse , one may assert firmly that it is vital for writers to mention a whole description concerning the speaker’s voice and intonation to be able to ‘understand’ the intended meaning. In some cases the stressed words written in italics as in:

‘ You teach me how cruel you’ve been- cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort- you deserve this. You have killed yourself…You loved me- then what right had you to leave me? ..Because misery, and degradation, and death and nothing that God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart – you have broken it - ..would you like to live with your soul in the grave? ( Wuthering Heights,pp197-8)

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If we try to analyse some morphological aspects in dialect we may notice that plural forms such as ‘een’ for ‘eyes’, ‘shoon’ for ‘shoes’, ‘childer’ for ‘children’ may be used throughout the novels. Personal pronouns are ‘Aw’ or ‘Ee’ for ‘I’ ; ‘thah’, ‘tuh’, or ‘thee’ for the second-person singular ( used in speaking to children, intimate friends, and by servants to their equals in rank, but not to the ‘gentry’) ; ‘ shoo’ for ‘she’, ‘ye’ or ‘yah’ for ‘you’, ‘em’ for ‘them’. Possessive pronouns include ‘maw’, ‘thy’ , ahr’, or ‘wer’ (our). The reflexive ‘himself’ becomes ‘hisseln’ becomes ‘wersel’,pronounced ‘(h)issen’, ‘ wersen’, with a strong stress on the second syllable. ‘ Shall’ and ‘ should’ become ‘ sall’, ‘sud’, or simply ‘s’ alone : ‘we’s hear hah it’s tuh be’ = ‘ we shall hear how it is to be’.Other words may be shortened or run together : ‘ the’ becomes ‘t’, ‘of the’ becomes ‘ut’ or ‘ot’ ; ‘ with’ becomes ‘wi’, ‘and’ becomes ‘wi’, ‘and’ becomes ‘an’ or ‘ un’ ; ‘ over’ may be ‘o’er’, ‘always’ ‘allus, and ‘do not’ ‘dunnut’. ‘Nobbut’, meaning ‘ only’, is probably an elided ‘nothing but’ or ‘nowt but’. ‘Have’ may be omitted from perfect tenses, as in ‘yah been’ for ‘you have been’.

Finally, one semantic study would be the fact that some words which look familiar may have a different meaning in dialect from that in standard English : to starve can mean ‘to be very cold’, a hole or hoile may be a room, and gate or gait may mean either ‘way’ or ‘road’. ‘Road’ can also mean ‘way’ in the abstract sense of ‘manner’, as in ‘goaon i’ that road’. ‘Nor’ or nur’ may mean either ‘than or ‘nor’ as in standard English : ‘Aw sud uh taen tent uh t’ maister better nur him’ means ‘ I should have taken care of the master better than he (did)’. The word ‘like’ has its standard

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meanings, but is also used quasi-adverbially before or after a word, adding to it the suggestion of ‘as it were’, ‘so to speak’, or giving a vague emphasis, as in ‘St. John is like his kirstened (christened) name’ in Jane Eyre ( ch. 29).

Words which survive only in dialect may have to be given a conjectural or approximate meaning from their context, since there may be no exact equivalents in standard English. The principal dialect speakers in the Brontës novels are Hannah in Jane Eyre, Hareton Earnshaw and Joseph in Wuthering Heights and even in Emily Brontë’s poems, in Charlotte Brontë’s early writings and letters and in Branwell Brontë’s works . Other dialect speakers may be found in other novels, like Nancy Brown in Agnes Grey a novel written by Anne Brontë, Moses Barraclough, Joe Scott, and Mr Yorke in Shirley , by Charlotte Brontë.

To conclude one may assert, after reading the Brontës’ novels, that the language used by some characters in their daily conversations, is not always reflecting faithfully their thoughts and beliefs. Hence, we may wonder which statement is more valid or at least truer; this : ‘we are what we say’ or that: ‘we are what we think’.50 But how can we check whether our parole is in accord with our langue? Moreover, can we guess if the speakers are meaning what they are saying since our language is perpetually influenced by such factors like: setting, time, circumstance and even

50 ‘What we say and what we mean’ in our daily conversation ; on this matter, please, refer to Appendix II. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland more precisely even in the court lawyers do not grasp the real situation: some wrote ‘important’ and others ‘ unimportant’. Furthermore, Alice saw this on their slates.

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our interest added to our psychological state of mind. In fact any fictional writing is affected by the author’s experiences in real life.

Moreover in the Brontë’s writing weather, landscape and nature carry very string symbolic meaning. The best example is perhaps that of the ‘storm which rages and lightning that strikes the great chestnut tree in the orchard in Jane Eyre ( p.259) As Heather Glen said (2002:9) ‘Nature alerts us that all is not right with the union’ when Rochester proposes to Jane. This symbol of the weather is also used by Emily Brontë when Lockwood goes back to Wuthering Heights, he arrives there just before a snowstorm. In addition, a titanic storm breaks over the moors when Heathcliff has gone, after he heard Catherine confess if would degrade her to marry him. In fact, the meaning of any piece of writing cannot be deduced just from the meaning of the words used by the authors, but the reader should consider other details such as religion, the social situation prevailing in that time in that country. Even natural phenomena, dreams, and the belief in the supernatural have to be taken into consideration in order to interpret ‘correctly’ the meaning of the Brontës’ writing.

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Appendix I

Here is the corpus of all the utterances produced in the Yorkshire dialect by the characters in Jane Eyre.51

[6] Mun : must

[7] Happen three miles : maybe three miles

[8] Varry like : but give ower studying : very likely : but do stop studying now

[9] Childer : children

[10] Fand : found

[11] Wor mich i’ your way : was very much like you

[12] Brass : money

[13] Dunnut : don’t

[14] Mucky : like dirty

[15] Kirstened : christened

51 I have selected all these utterances from the two novels. Then I relied on Stephen Coote, Anne Holker, The Brontë Parsonage during my visits to Haworth where I had the opportunity to walk on the Brontës’ footsteps and to talk to the inhabitants about Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

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[16] ‘ing and holm’ : two north country words meaning stretches of land in, or alongside , water; or a meadow , particularly a meadow near a river which is liable to flooding

[17] ‘that caps the globe’ : ‘that the giddy limit ‘ or ‘ that beats everything’

[18] Drawing away : approching death

[19] Lameter : cripple or lame person

[20] Redd up : tidied , especially having had the hair dressed or combed

[21] She’s noan faàl : she’s no fool ; sometimes it means not ugly

[22] Beck : a Northern word for a brook , particularly one that has a stony bed

[23] Likely : like or suitable

[24] Happen ….nor : perhaps….than

[25] Noan : not

[26] Agate : in mind or afoot

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[27] Threaped : quarrelled

[28] Unlikely : inconvenient

Then in Wuthering Heights :

[1] Agait : afoot

[2] Ague : feverish fit

[3] Allwildered like : looking bewildered

[4] An : if

[5] Aw daht : I’m afraid

[6] Bahn : going

[7] Baht : without

[8] Bairn : child

[9] Banning : swearing

[10] Beaver : beaver fur hat

[11] Beck : stream

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[12] Bespeak : ask for

[13] Blubbering : crying

[14] Bog hoile : hole in the marsh

[15] Bout : without

[16] Brach : bitch

[17] Brass : money

[18] Brown study : deep thought

[19] Brusts : bursts

[20] Cambric : linen

[21] Cant : brisk

[22] Changeling : a baby secretly swapped for another

[23] Childer : children

[24] Chit : girl

[25] Chuck : dear

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[26] Cipher : a nondescript person

[27] Clothes-press : wardrobe

[28] Clown : peasant

[29] Cockatrice : an imaginary reptile

[30] Conned : learned

[31] Copestone : i.e. finishing touch

[32] Coxcomb : fool

[33] Crahnr’s ’ quest enah : coroner’s inquest enough

[34] Devastate the moors : a shooting party

[35] Diurnal : daily

[36] Dree : joyless

[37] Dunnock : hedge sparrow . The cuckoo uses other birds’ nests for its own

[38] Een : eyes

[39] Eft : small lizard

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[40] Elder : senior lay person

[41] Elf-bolt : i.e. a flint arrowhead

[42] Elysium : the ancient Greek Heaven , i.e. perfect happiness.

[43] Fahl : foul

[44] Fairishes : fairies

[45] Fellies : fellows

[46] Fit : feet

[47] Flags : flagstones

[48] Flaysome : terrifying

[49] Flighted : scolded

[50] Flitting : moving

[51] Foreigners : any strangers

[52] Frame : go quickly

[53] Frame : invent

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[54] Galloway : small horse

[55] Ganging : going

[56] Gaumless : stupid

[57] Gentle : well born

[58] Ghoul : a grave-robbing spirit

[59] Girn : snarl

[60] Glees : songs

[61] Grat : wept

[62] Grimalkin : a name for a cat perhaps deriving from Macbeth according to Stephen Coote

[63] Hahs : house

[64] Hahsomidiver : however

[65] Harried : carried

[66] Heath : heather

[67] Hend : hand

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[68] Indigenae : local people

[69] Jocks : provisions

[70] Laiking : playing

[71] Laith : born

[72] Lath : weakling [73] Lay : forget

[74] Lees : fields for grazing

[75] Likker : likely

[76] Ling : heather

[77] Lugs : ears

[78] Madling : foolish person

[79] Meeterly clane : clear enough

[80] Mell on’t : interferes with

[81] Mensful : clean

[82] Mitch : lucky

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[83] Mitch : much

[84] Mim : prim

[85] Mither : mother

[86] Mols , beneath the : under the earth

[87] Mulled : mixed with sugar and spice and warmed

[88] Mummy : mush

[89] Neeght : night

[90] Negus : warmed wine and water

[91] Norther : neither

[92] Nowt : good for nothing

[93] Orther : either

[94] Ousel : small ,thrush-like bird

[95] Parte t’ guilp : skim off froth

[96] Pharisee : hypocrite

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[97] Plottered : floundered

[98] Quean : girl

[99] Reaming : foaming

[100] Riven : pulled

[101] Rullers : rulers

[102] Rush of a lass : slip of a girl

[103] Sackless : weak

[104] Sarve ye aht : get his own back on you

[105] Say : see

[106] Shoon : shoes

[107] Shou : she

[108] Snoozled : nuzzled

[109] Snuffed : trimmed

[110] Stalled at : fed up with

[111] Stark : stiff

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[112] Swells : ridges

[113] Taen tent : taken care

[114] Thrang : busy

[115] Throstles : thrushes

[116] Underdrawn : the rafters were uncovered

[117] Unlikely : unsuitable

[118] Valances : drapery

[119] War on war : worse and worse

[120] Wer : our

[121] Wick : lively

[122] Wicket : gate

[123] Win : reach

[124] Wisht : be quiet

[125] Whet are ye for ? he shouted . T’ maister’s dahn i t’ fowld . Goa rahnd endut’laith ,

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if yah went tuh spake tull him .

What do you want ? ( literally , what are you the barn if you want to speak to him .

[126] They’s nobbut t’ missis ; and shoo’ll nut oppen ‘t an ye mak yer flaysome dins till neeght .

There’s nobody but the missis , and she’ ll not open it even if you make your awful din till night .

[127] Nor-ne me ! Aw’ ll hae noa hend wi’ t ...

Not me ! I ‘ ll have no part in ( literally , hand with ) it .

[128] Aw woonder hagh yah can faishion tuh stand thear i ‘ idleness un war , when all on ’em’s goan aght ! Bud yah ‘re a nowt , and it’s noa use talking -- yah’ll niver mend uhyer ill ways ; bud , goa raight tuh t’ divil , like yer mother afore ye !

I wonder how you can let yourself stand there in idleness and worse, when all of them have

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gone out !But you are a nought ( nothing ) , and it is no use talking –you’ re never mend your evil ( ill ) ways , but ( will ) go right to the devil like your mother before you .

[129] Hearken , hearken , shoo’s cursing on em ! muttered Joseph , towards whom I had been steering .

Listen , listen (harken ,harken ) , she’s cursing them !

[130] Maister , maister , he’s staling t ‘ lantern ! shouted the ancient , pursuing my retreat . Hey , Gnasher ! Hey dog , ! Hey , wolf hoold , him hoold !

Master , master , he is stealing the lantern ! ...Hey ,Gnasher …Hey wolf ! hold him , hold him !

[131] Well Mr. Earnshaw , Zillah cried , I wonder what you ‘ll have agait next ! are we going to murder folk on our very door stone-stones ? I see this house wil never do for me – look at t ’ poor lad , he ‘s fair choking ! Wisht , wisht ! you mun’n’t go on so . Come in , and I’ll cure that .

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There now , hold ye still .

Well , Mr. Earnshaw ….I wonder what you’ ll have going next! Are we going to murder people on our very doorstep ? I see this house will never do for me - look at the poor lad , he is nearly choking . Hush , hush , you mustn’t carry on so …

[132 T ‘ master nobbut just buried , and Sabbathnut oe’ red , und t’ sahnd uh ‘ gospel still I’ yer lugs , and yah darr be laiking ! shame onye ! sit yedahn , ill childer ! they ‘s good books enough if ye’ll read ‘em : sitye dahn, and think uh yer sowls ! ..

The master only just buried , and Sabbath not over , and the soud of the gospel still in our ears , and you dare to play ! Shame on you ! Sit yourselves down , bad children ! There are enough good books if you will read them : sit yourselves down and think of your souls .

[133] Lumber : junk . ( a text )

[134] scroop : back cover . ( of a volume )

[135] Maister Hindley ! shouted our chaplain . Maister , coom hither ! Miss Cathy’s riven th’ back off ‘Th’

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helmet uh Salvation , un’ Heathcliff’s pawsed his fit intuh t’ first part uh ‘ T ’ Brooad way to Destruction ! It’s fair flaysome ut yah let ‘em goa on this gait . Ech ! th’owd man ud uh laced ‘em properly – bud he’s goan !

Master Hindley ! Master , come here ! MissCathy’s torn the back off ‘ The Helmet of Salvation ‘, and Heathcliff’s pawed his foot into the first part of ‘ The Broad Way to Destruction .It’s terrible of you to them go on at this pace …the old man would have laced into them properly - but he’s gone …

[136] Owd Nick Old Nick , the devil .

[137] Frame up-stairs and make little din -- they might pray alone that evening -- he had summut to do . Go upstairs , and make little noise -- he has something to do .

[138] I removed the habit , and there shone forth , beneath a grand plaid . Grand plaid ; silk frock ...

[139] Rush : reed .

[140] It was far in the night , and the bairnies

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grat , The mither beneath the mools heard that . Bairnies grat : children wept ; mither: mother; mools : mounds of earth over graves .

[141] Uhd hah isn’t that nowt comed in frough th’ field , be this time ? What is he abaht ? girt eedle seeght ! And now is it that nought ( nothing = Heathcliff ) has not come in from the field by this time ? What is he about ? great idle sight !

[142] Yon lad gets war and war ! observed he on re-entering . He’s left th’ yate ut t’ full swing , and Miss’s pony has trodden dahn two rigs uh corn , un plottered through , raight o’er intuh t’ meadow ! Hahsomdiver , t’ maister’ull play t’ devil to – morn , and he ‘ ll do weel . He’s patience itsseln wi’ sich careless , offald craters patience itsseln he is ! Bud he’ll nut be soa allus -- yah’s see , all on ye ! Yah mum’n’t drive him aht uf his heead fur nowt !

That lad gets worse and worse ...He’ s left the gate at full swing , and miss’s pony has trodden down two ridges ( rows ) of corn , and trampled right through into the meadow ! However the master will play the devil tomorrow , and he’ll do well ( to do so ) . He’s patience himself with such

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a careless , useless creatures .... Byt he’ll not be so always -- you’ll see , all of you ! You mustn’t drive him out of his head for nought ( nothing ) .

[143] Aw sud more likker look for th’ horse , he replied . It ‘ud be tuh more sense . Bud , aw can look for norther horse , nur man uf a neeght loike this -- as black as t’ chimbley ! und Hathecliff’s noan t’ chap tuh coom ut maw whistle -- happen he’ll be less hard uh hearing ‘wi ye .

I should more likely ( rather ) look for the horse ...It would make ( be to ) more sense . But I can look for neither horse nor man on a night like this -- as black as a chimney . and Heathcliff’s not a fellow to come at ( respond to ) my whistle -- perhaps he’ll be less hard of hearing with you !

[144] Wake : wait up

[145] Nay , nay , he’s noan at Gimmerton ! said Joseph .Aw’s niver wonder , bud he’s at t’ bothom uf a bug- hoile . This visitation worn’t for nowt , und Aw wod hev ye tuh look aht , Miss -- yah muh be t’ next . Thank Hivin for all ! All warks together for gooid tuh them as is chozzen , and piked aht froo’ th’ rubbidge ! Yah knaw whet t’ Scripture sees .

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No , no , he ‘s not at Gimmerton ... I wouldn’t wonder if he weren’t at the bottom of a boghole . This visitation wasn’t for nothing , and I would have you look out , Miss -- you might be the next ( one ) . Thank Heavenfor everything ! Everything works together for the good of those who are chosen ( the Elect ) , and picked out from among the rubbish ! You know what the Scripture says . . [146] Running after t’ lads , as usuald ! croaked Joseph , catching an opportunity , from our hesitation , to thrust in his evil tongue . If Aw wur yah , maister , Aw’d just slam t’ boards i’ their faces all on ‘em , gentle and simple ! Never a day ut yah ‘re off , but yon cat uh Linton comes snearing hither ; and Miss Nelly shoo’s a fine lass ! shoo sits watching for ye i‘ ‘t kitchen; and as yah’re in at one door , he’s aht t’ other ; und ‘ then , when grand lady goes a courting uf hor side ! It’s bonny behaviour , lurking amang t’ fields , after twelve ut’ night , wi’ that fahl , flaysome divil uf a gipsy , Heathcliff ! They think Aw’m blind ; but aw’m noan , now tut t’ soart ! Aw seed young Linton , boath coming and going , nad Aw see yah ( directing his discourse to me ). Yah gooid fur nowt , slattenly witch ! nip up und bolt intuh th’ hahs , t’ minute yah heard t’ maister’s horse fit clatter up t’ road .

Running after the lads as usual ... If I were you , master , I’d just slam the door in their faces , gentlemen and commoners ! There is never a day that you’re away , but that fellow of a Linton comes sneaking hither ; and Miss Nelly she’s a fine lass !She sits watching for you in the kitchen , and

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when ypou’re in at one door , he’s out at the other ; and then our grand lady goes courting on her side ! It’s lovely behaviour , lurking in the fields after twelve at night with that foul , fearsome devil of a gypsy , Heathcliff ! They think I ‘m blind , but I’m not , nothing of the sort ! I saw young Linton , both coming and going ( directing his discourse to me ) . You good for nothing , slatternly witch ! -- you pop up and bolt into the house , the minute you heard the master’s horse feet clatter up the road .

[147] Nelly , he said , we’s hae a Crahnr’s quest enah , at ahr folks . One on ‘em’s a’ most getten his finger cut off wi’ hauding t’ other froo’ sticking hisseln loike a cawlf . That’s maister , yah knaw , uh soa up uh going tuh t’ grand ‘ sizes . He’s noan feard uh t’ Bench uh judges , norther Paul , nur Peter , nur John , nor Matthew , nor noan on ‘em , nut he ! He fair like’s he langs tuh set his brazened face agean ‘em ! And you bonny lad Heathcliff , yah mind , he’s arare un ! He can girn a laugh , a s weel’s onybody at a raight divil’s jest . Does he niver say nowt of his fine living amang us , when he goas tuh t’ Grange ? This is t’ way on ‘t -- up at sun-dahn ; dice , brandy, closed shutters , und can’ le lught till next day , at nooin : then t’ fooil gangs banning un raving tuh his cham’er , making dacent fowks dig thur fingers i’ thur lugs fur varry shaume ; un’ the knave , wah he carn cahnt his brass , un’ate , un’ sleep , un’ off tuh his neibours’s tuh gossip wi’ t’ wife . I’ course , he tells Dame Catherine hah hor father’s goold runs intuh his pocket , and her fathur’s son gallops dahn’t Broad road , while he flees afore tuh oppen ‘t pikes ? Now , Miss Linton , Joseph is an old

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rascal , but no liar ; and , if his account of Heathcliff’s conduct be true , you would never think of desiring such a husband , would you ?

Nelly , he said , we’ll be having a Coroner’s inquest soon , at our folks . One of them has almost got his finger cut off while holding the other back from sticking like a calf . That’s Master you know , that’s therefore about to go to the Grand Assizes( a court , but here evidently a euphemism for the last judgement ) . He ‘s not afraid of neither Paul nor Peter nor John nor Mathew , of none of them , not he ! It’s as though he longs to set his brazen face against them ! and yon bonny lad Heathcliff , you know , he’s a rare one ! He can grin as well as anybody at a real devil’s jest . Does he never say anything of his fine living amongst us , when he goes to the Grange ? This is the way of it – make it sundown ; dice , brandy , closed shutters , and candlelight till the next day at noon : then the fool ( Hindley ) goes cursing and raving to his chamber , making decent folks dig their fingers in their ears for very shame ; and the knave ( Heathcliff ) , why he can count his brass ( brass ) and eat and sleep and go off to his neighbour’s to gossip with his wife. Of course , he tells Dame Catherine how her father ‘s gold runs into his pocket , and her father’s son gallops down the Broad road , while he runs before him to open the gates ?

[148] Kirk : church .

[149] Mun : must .

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[150] Frame off : go away .

[151] Now , wilt tuh be ganging .

Now will you be going .

[152] Did iver Christian body owt like it ?Minching un’ munching ! Hah can Aw tell whet ye say ?

Did ever a Christian person hear anything like this ? Mincing and munching ( her words ) ! How can I tell what you’re saying ?

[153] Nor nuh me ! Aw getten summut else to do .

Not me ! I’ve got something else to do .

(154] Gooid Lord ! he muttered , sitting down ,and stroking his ribbed stocking from the knee to the ankle . If they’s tuh be fresh ortherings -- just when Aw getten used tuh two maisters , if Aw mun hev a mistress set o’er my head , it’s loike time tuh be flitting . Aw niver did think tuh say t’ day ut Aw mud lave th’ owld place -- but Aw daht it’s nigh at end !

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Good Lord …..If there to be fresh orderings ( giving of orders ) -- just when I’ve got used to two masters , if I must have a mistress set over my head , it’s like time to be moving on . I never did think to see the day that I might leave the old place -- but I fear it ‘s nigh at hand .

[155] Thear ! he ejaculated . Hareton , thah willut sup thy porridge tuh neeght ; they’ll be nowt bud lumps as big as maw ! Thear , pale t’ guiltp off , un’ yah’ll hae done wi’t . Bang, bang . It’s a marcy t’ bottomisn’t deaved aht !

There … Hareton , you won’t eat your porridge tonight ; there’ll be nothing but lumps as big as my fist . There ,,,again ! I(d throw in the bowl and all , I fI were you! There …. It’s a mercy the bottom isn’t delved ( broken , dug ) out .

[156] .....assuring me repeatedly , that ‘ the barn was every bit as gooid as I , and every bit as wollsome ‘ ...

The child was every bit as good ...... and every bit as healthy .

[157] ‘ Parlour ! ‘ he echoed , sneeringly , ‘parlour ! Nay we ‘ve noa parlours . If yah dunnut loike wer company, they’s maister’s ; un’ if yah dunnot loike maister , they’s us .

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No , we ‘ve no parlour ! If you don’t like our company , there’s master ‘s ; and if you don’t like master, there ‘s us !

[158] Here’s a rahm , he said , at last , flinging backa cranky board on hinges . It’s weel eneugh tuh ate a few porridge in . They ‘s a pack uh corn i’ t’ corner , thear , meeterly clane ; if yah’re feared uh muckying yer grand silk cloes , spread yer handkerchir ut t’ top on ‘t .

Here ‘ s a room ..It’s good enough to eat some porridge in . There a sack of grain in the corner there , fairly clean ; if you’re afraid of dirtying your grand silk clothes , spread your handkerchief on top of it .

[159] Oh , it’s Maister Hathecliff’s yah’re wenting ? cried he , as if making a new discovery . Couldn’t ye uh said soa , at onst ? un’ then , Aw mud uh telled ye , baht all this wark , ut that’s just one yah cannot sea -- he allas keeps it locked , un’ nob’dy iver mells on ’t but hisseln .

Oh , it’s Master Heathcliff ‘ s you want ?... Couldn ‘t you say so , at once ? and then , I might have told you , without all this work , that that ‘ s one you cannot see -- he keeps it locked , and nobody ever meddles with but himself .

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[160] Whear the divil , began the religious elder . The Lord bless us ! the Lord forgie us ! Whear the hell , wold ye gang ? ye marred , wearisome nowt ! Yah sen all bud Hareton ‘s bit uf a cham’er . They ‘s nut another hoile tuh lig dahn in i’ th’ hahse .

Where is the devil ... The Lord bless us ! The Lord forgivr us ! Where the hell would you go ? you sploilt wearisome nought ! You have seen all but Hareton ‘ s bit of a chamber . There ‘ s not another room to lie down in in the house .

[161] Ech ! ech ! exclaimed joseph . Weel done , Miss Cathy ! Weel done , Miss Cathy ! Hahsiver , t’ maister sall just tum’ le o’er them brocken pots ; un’ then we ‘s hear summut ; we ‘ s hear hah it ‘ s tuh be . Gooid – for – nowt madling ! yah deserve pining froo this tuh Churstmas , flinging t ‘s precious gifts uh God under fooit i ‘ yer flaysome rages ! Bud , Aw’m mista’en if yah shew yer sperrit lang . Will Hathecliff bide bonny ways , think ye ? Aw nobbut wish he muh cotch ye i’ that plisky . Aw nobbut wish he may .

[162] Well done , Miss Cathy ! ....However , hte master will just tumble over those broken pots ; and then we ‘ ll hear something ; we’ ll hear how it ‘s to be . Good for nothing madling ! you deserve to starve from now to Christmas , flinging the precious gifts of god under foot in your fearsome rages ! But I doubt you ‘ ll show spirit for long ! Will Heathcliff abide such bonny ways , do you think ? I

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only wish he might catch you in that rage! I only wish he may !

[163] There’s rahm fur boath yah , un yer pride , nah , Aw sud think i ‘ th ‘ hahse . It ‘ s empty ; yah muh hev it all tuh yerseln , un Him as allas maks a third , i’ sich ill company !

There ‘ s room for both you and your pride , now , I should think , in the house . It ‘ s empty ; you may have it all to yourself , and He ( God ) , who always makes a third , in such bad company !

[164] Brach : bitch .

[165] Dree : sad , dreary .

[166] Girned : grinned , sneered , snarled .

[167] Whet is thur tuh do , nah ? Whet is thur tuh Do nuh ?

What is there to do now ?

[168] Und soa , yah been murthering on him ? exclame Joseph , lifting his hands and eyes in horror . If iver Aw seed a seeght loike this ! May the Lord --

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And so , you have been murdering him ? … If ever I saw a sight like this ! May the Lord .

[169] Aw ‘d rather he’d goan hisseln fur t’ doctor ! Aw sud uh taen tent uh t’ master better nur him -- un he warn’t deead when Aw left , now’t uh t’ soart !

I ‘d rather he ‘d gone himself for the doctor ! I would have taken better care of the master than him -- and he wasn’t dead when I left , nothing of the sort !

[170] Wisht ! : hush !

[171] Offald ( ways ) : awful ( ways ) .

[172] Near : tight fisted .

[173] It’s Maister Linton Aw mun spake tull It’s Mister Linton I must speak to .

[174] Which is his rahm ? Pursued the fellow , surveying the range of closed doors .

Which is his room ?

[175] Hathecliff has send me for his lad , un Aw munn ‘t goa back baht him .

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Heathcliff has sent me for his lad , and I mustn’t go back without him .

[176] Noa ! said Joseph , giving a thud with his prop on the floor , and assuming an authoritative air . Noa ! that manes nowt -- Heathcliff makes noa cahnt uh t’ mother , nur yah norther ; bud he ‘ll hev his lad ; und Aw mun tak him -- soa nah yah knaw !

No ! .. No ! that means nothing -- Heathcliff takes no account of the mother , nor of you neither ; but he’ll have his lad ; and I must take him -- so now you know !

Varrah weel ! shouted Joseph, as he slowly drew off . Tuh morn , he’s come hisseln , u’ htrust him aht , if yah darr !

Very well ! ... In the morning , he’ll come himself , and thrust him out , if you dare !

[177] Is there owt ails th’ victuals ? he asked , thrusting the tray under Heathcliff ’ s nose .

Is there anything wrong with the victuals ?

[178] Wah ! answered Joseph , yon dainty chap says he cannot ate ‘em . Bud Aw guess it’s right ! His

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mother wer just soa -- me wer a’ most too mucky tuh sow t’ com fur makking her breead .

Why ... you dainty chap syas he cannot eat them . But I gues it’s all right . His mother was just like that -- we were almost too filthy to sow the corn for making her bread ! [179] Bacca : tobacco .

[180] Mummy : pulp .

[181] Na --ay! He snarled , or rather screamed through his nose . Na --ay ! yah muh goa back whear yah coom frough .

No ! You may go back to where you came from !

[182] Aw wer sure he’d sarve ye eht ! He’s a grand lad ! He’s getten t’ raight sperrit in him ! He knaws -- Aye , he knaws , as weel as Aw do , who sud be t’ maister yonder -- Ech, ech , ech! He mad ye skift properly ! ech , ech , ech !

I was sure he ’d serve you out ( give you your just deserts ! ) He ‘ s a grand lad ! He has the right spirit in him ! He knows -- yes , he knows , as well as I do , who should bethemaster yonder … He made you shift ( skip ? ) properly !

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[183] Joseph asked me whether I were bahn to be as mad as him .

Born to be as mad as him .

[184] Wake for : wake up for .

[185] Eea , aw keep th ‘ hause .

Yes , I keep the house .

[186] T ‘ maister ! she cried in astonishment . Whet , whoiver knew yah wur coming , Yah sud ha ‘ send word ! They ’s nowt norther dry -- nor mensful abaht t ‘ place : nowt there is n ‘ t !

The master ? … What , whoever knew you were coming ? You should have sent word ! There’ s nothing either dry or proper about the place . There isn ‘ t anything !

[187] Eea , f ‘ r owt Ee knaw ! She answered , skyrrying away with a pan of hot cinders .

Yes , for all I know !

[188] Aw ‘ d rayther , by th ‘ haulf , hev ‘ em swearing i‘ my lugs frough morn tuh neeght , nur

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hearken yah , hahsiver ! said the tenant of the kitchen , in answer to an unheard speech of Nelly ‘ s . It ‘ s a blazing shaime , Aw cannot open t ‘ Blessed Book ,bud yah set up them glories tuh sattan , un’ all t ‘ flaysome wickednesses ut iver wer born intuh t ‘ warld ! Oh ! yah re a raight nowt ; un ‘ shoo ‘ s another ; un ‘ that poor lad ‘ ull be lost , atween ye . Poor lad ! he added , with a groan ; he ‘ s witched , Aw ‘ m sartin on ‘ t ! O , Lord , judge ‘ em , fur they ‘ s norther law nur justice amang wer rullers !

I ‘ d rather , by half , have them swearing in my ears from morning to night ; nor hear you , howsoever ! … It ‘ s a blazing shame , that I cannot open the Blessed Book , without your setting up those glories to Satan , and all the awful wickedness that ever was born into the world ! Oh ! You ‘ re a real nought ; and she ‘ s another ; and that poor lad will be lost between you . Poor lad ! … He ‘ s bewitched, I ‘ m certain of it ! O , Lord , judge them , for there ‘ s neither law nor justice among our ( earthly ) rulers !

[189] I heard Joseph asking whether it warn ‘ t a crying scandal that she should have fellies at her time of life ? And then , to get them jocks out uh ‘ t ‘ maister ‘ s cellar! He fair shaamed to ‘ bide still and see it .

Wasn ‘ t it a crying scandal that she should have fellows at her time of life ? And then , to fetch those jugs out of the Master ‘ s cellar ! He was ashamed to sit still and see it.

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[190] I shall have naught to do wi ‘ you , and your mucky pride , and your damned , mocking tricks ! he answered . I ‘ ll go to hell , body and soul , before I look sideways after you gain ! Side out of t ‘ gait , now ; this minute !

I shall have nothing to do wit you and your filthy pride ….. Get out of the way , now ; this minute !

[191] Tak ‘ these tuh t ‘ maistr , lad , he said , un ‘ bide theare ; Aw ‘ s gang up tuh my awn rahm . This hoile ‘ s norther mesful , nor seemly fur us -- we mun side aht , and search another !

Take these into the master , lad ,… and wait there ; I ‘ m going up to my own room . This room ( or house ) is neither proper nor seemly for us ; we must get out and seek another .

[192] Only books ut yah leave , Aw suaall tak ‘ intuh th ‘ hahse , said Joseph , un ‘ it ‘ ull be mitch if yah find ‘ em agean ; soa , yah muh plase yourseln !

Any books that you leave , I shall take into the house … and it ‘ ll be a miracle if you find them again ; so you may please yourself .

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[193] Aw mun hev my wage , and Aw mun go ! Aw hed aimed tuh dee , wheare Aw ‘ d sarved fur sixty years ; un ‘ Aw thowt Aw ‘d lug my booksup intuh t ‘ garret , un ‘ all my bits uh stuff , un’ they sud hev t ‘ kitchen tuh theirseln ; fur t ‘ sake uh quietness . It wur hard tuh gie up my awn hearthstun , bud w thowt Aw could do that ! Bud , nah , shoo ‘ s taan my garden frough m , un ‘ by th ‘ heart ! Maister , Aw cannot stand it ! Yah muh bend tuh th ‘ yoak , an ye will -- Aw ‘ noan used to ‘ t and an ow ‘ d man doesn ‘ t sooin get used tuh new barthens -- Aw ‘ d rather arn my bite , an’ my sp , wi ‘ a hammer in th ‘ road !

I must have my wage and I must go ! I had meant to die where I ‘ d served for sixty years ; and I thought I ‘ d lug my books up into the garret , and all my bits of stuff , and they should have the kitchen to themselves ; for the sake of quiet . It was hard to give up my own hearthstone , but I thought I could do that ! But no , she ‘ s taken my garden from me , and my place by t hearth ! Master , I cannot , stand it ! You may bend by the yoke , if you want to—I ‘ m not used to it , and an old man doesn ‘ t soon get used to new conditions -- I ‘ d rather earn my keep with a hammer on the road !

[194] It ‘ s noan Nelly ! answered Joseph . Aw sudn ‘ t shift fur Nelly -- nasty , ill nowt as shoo is . Thank God ! shoo cannot stale t ‘ sowl nob ‘ dy ! Shoo wer niver soa

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handsome , bud whet a body mud look at her ‘baht winking . It ‘ s yon flaysome , graceless quean , ut ‘ s witched ahr lad , wi ‘ her bold en , un,her forradd ways -- tilll - Nay ! It fair brusts my heart !He ‘ s forgotten all ‘ e done for him , un made on him, un ‘ goan un’riven up a whole raw ut t ‘ grantest currant trees , I ‘ t ‘ grden! And here – he lamnted outright , unmanned by a sense of his bitter injuries , and Earnshaw ‘ s ingratitude and dangerous condition .

It ‘s not Nelly ! …I wouldn ‘ t move because of Nelly , nasty evil nothing that she is . Thank God ! she can’t steal anybody ‘ soul ! She was never so handsome that a man mightn ‘ t look at her without winking . It ‘ s yon terrible , graceless slut , who has bewitched our lad , with her bold eyes , and her forward ways -- till -- No ! It nearly breaks my heart ! He ‘s forgotten all I did for him , and made of him , and has gone and torn up a whole row of the grandest currant trees in the garden !

[195] Th ‘ divil ‘ s harried off his soul , he cried , and he muh hev his carcass intuh t ‘ bargin , for ow ‘ t aw care ! Ech ! What a wicked un he looks girnning at at death ! and the old sinner grinned in mockery .

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The devil ‘ s carried off his soul .. and he may have his carcass into the bargain , for all I carel Ech ! How wicked he looks , grinned at death .

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Appendix II

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll

‘Here!' cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally upset the week before.

`Oh, I BEG your pardon!' she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the accident of the goldfish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the jury-box, or they would die.

`The trial cannot proceed,' said the King in a very grave voice, `until all the jurymen are back in their proper places-- ALL,' he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said do.

Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move. She soon got it out again, and put it right; `not that it signifies much,' she said to herself; `I should think it would be QUITE as much use in the trial one way up as the other.'

As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except

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the Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the court.

`What do you know about this business?' the King said to Alice.

`Nothing,' said Alice.

`Nothing WHATEVER?' persisted the King.

`Nothing whatever,' said Alice.

`That's very important,' the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: `UNimportant, your Majesty means, of course,' he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.

`UNimportant, of course, I meant,' the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, `important--unimportant-- unimportant-- important--' as if he were trying which word sounded best.

Some of the jury wrote it down `important,' and some `unimportant.' Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates; `but it doesn't matter a bit,' she thought to herself.

At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out `Silence!' and read out from his book, `Rule Forty- two. ALL PERSONS MORE THAN A MILE HIGH TO LEAVE THE COURT.'

Everybody looked at Alice.

`I'M not a mile high,' said Alice.

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`You are,' said the King.

`Nearly two miles high,' added the Queen.

`Well, I shan't go, at any rate,' said Alice: `besides, that's not a regular rule: you invented it just now.'

`It's the oldest rule in the book,' said the King.

`Then it ought to be Number One,' said Alice.

The King turned pale, and shut his note-book hastily. `Consider your verdict,' he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice.

`There's more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,' said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry; `this paper has just been picked up.'

`What's in it?' said the Queen.

`I haven't opened it yet,' said the White Rabbit, `but it seems to be a letter, written by the prisoner to--to somebody.'

`It must have been that,' said the King, `unless it was written to nobody, which isn't usual, you know.'

`Who is it directed to?' said one of the jurymen.

Ìt isn't directed at all,' said the White Rabbit; ìn fact, there's nothing written on the OUTSIDE.' He unfolded the paper as he spoke, and added Ìt isn't a letter, after all: it's a set of verses.'

`Are they in the prisoner's handwriting?' asked another of they jurymen.

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`No, they're not,' said the White Rabbit, `and that's the queerest thing about it.' (The jury all looked puzzled.)

`He must have imitated somebody else's hand,' said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.)

`Please your Majesty,' said the Knave, `I didn't write it, and they can't prove I did: there's no name signed at the end.'

`If you didn't sign it,' said the King, `that only makes the matter worse. You MUST have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed your name like an honest man.'

There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the King had said that day.

`That PROVES his guilt,' said the Queen.

`It proves nothing of the sort!' said Alice. `Why, you don't even know what they're about!'

`Read them,' said the King.

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. `Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked.

`Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'

These were the verses the White Rabbit read:--

`They told me you had been to her, And mentioned me to him:

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She gave me a good character, But said I could not swim.

He sent them word I had not gone (We know it to be true): If she should push the matter on, What would become of you?

I gave her one, they gave him two, You gave us three or more; They all returned from him to you, Though they were mine before.

If I or she should chance to be Involved in this affair, He trusts to you to set them free, Exactly as we were.

My notion was that you had been (Before she had this fit) An obstacle that came between Him, and ourselves, and it.

Don't let him know she liked them best, For this must ever be A secret, kept from all the rest, Between yourself and me.'

`That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet,' said the King, rubbing his hands; `so now let the jury--'

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`If any one of them can explain it,' said Alice, (she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn't a bit afraid of interrupting him,) `I'll give him sixpence. _I_ don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.'

The jury all wrote down on their slates, `She doesn't believe there's an atom of meaning in it,' but none of them attempted to explain the paper.

`If there's no meaning in it,' said the King, `that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know,' he went on, spreading out the verses on his knee, and looking at them with one eye; `I seem to see some meaning in them, after all. "--said i could not swim--" you can't swim, can you?' he added, turning to the Knave.

The Knave shook his head sadly. `Do I look like it?' he said. (Which he certainly did not, being made entirely of cardboard.)

`All right, so far,' said the King, and he went on muttering over the verses to himself: `"We know it to be true--" that's the jury, of course-- "I gave her one, they gave him two--" why, that must be what he did with the tarts, you know--'

`But, it goes on "They all returned from him to you,"' said Alice.

`Why, there they are!' said the King triumphantly, pointing to the tarts on the table. `Nothing can be clearer than that. Then again--"Before she had this fit--" you never had fits, my dear, I think?' he said to the Queen.

`Never!' said the Queen furiously, throwing an inkstand at the Lizard as she spoke. (The unfortunate little Bill had left off writing on his slate with one finger, as he found it made no mark; but he now hastily began again, using the ink, that was trickling down his face, as long as it lasted.)

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`Then the words don't fit you,' said the King, looking round the court with a smile. There was a dead silence.

`It's a pun!' the King added in an offended tone, and everybody laughed, `Let the jury consider their verdict,' the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

`No, no!' said the Queen. `Sentence first--verdict afterwards.'

`Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. `The idea of having the sentence first!'

`Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple.

`I won't!' said Alice.

`Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

`Who cares for you?' said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) `You're nothing but a pack of cards!'

At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.

`Wake up, Alice dear!' said her sister; `Why, what a long sleep you've had!'

`Oh, I've had such a curious dream!' said Alice, and she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange Adventures of hers that you have just been reading about; and when she had finished, her sister

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kissed her, and said, `It WAS a curious dream, dear, certainly: but now run in to your tea; it's getting late.' So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been.

But her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all her wonderful Adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion, and this was her dream:--

First, she dreamed of little Alice herself, and once again the tiny hands were clasped upon her knee, and the bright eager eyes were looking up into hers--she could hear the very tones of her voice, and see that queer little toss of her head to keep back the wandering hair that WOULD always get into her eyes--and still as she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive the strange creatures of her little sister's dream.

The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by-- the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool--she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution--once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it-- once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard's slate- pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable Mock Turtle.

So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality--the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds--the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep- bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the

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shepherd boy--and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all thy other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard--while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle's heavy sobs.

Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.

A Mad Tea-Party

There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and the talking over its head. `Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,' thought Alice; `only, as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind.'

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: `No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. `There's PLENTY of room!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

`Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. `I don't

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see any wine,' she remarked.

`There isn't any,' said the March Hare.

`Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Alice angrily.

`It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited,' said the March Hare.

`I didn't know it was YOUR table,' said Alice; `it's laid for a great many more than three.'

`Your hair wants cutting,' said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.

`You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said with some severity; `it's very rude.'

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was, `Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'

`Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.--I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.

`Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare.

`Exactly so,' said Alice.

`Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.

`I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know.'

`Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. `You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!'

`You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, `that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!'

`You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, `that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!'

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`It IS the same thing with you,' said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.

The Hatter was the first to break the silence. `What day of the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said `The fourth.'

`Two days wrong!' sighed the Hatter. `I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily at the March Hare.

`It was the BEST butter,' the March Hare meekly replied.

`Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,' the Hatter grumbled: `you shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife.'

The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, `It was the BEST butter, you know.'

Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. `What a funny watch!' she remarked. `It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!'

`Why should it?' muttered the Hatter. `Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?'

`Of course not,' Alice replied very readily: `but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together.'

`Which is just the case with MINE,' said the Hatter.

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. `I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could.

`The Dormouse is asleep again,' said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose.

The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its

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eyes, `Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.'

`Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.

`No, I give it up,' Alice replied: `what's the answer?'

`I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Hatter.

`Nor I,' said the March Hare.

Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.'

`If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, `you wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.'

`I don't know what you mean,' said Alice.

`Of course you don't!' the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. `I dare say you never even spoke to Time!'

`Perhaps not,' Alice cautiously replied: `but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.'

`Ah! that accounts for it,' said the Hatter. `He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!'

(`I only wish it was,' the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)

`That would be grand, certainly,' said Alice thoughtfully: `but then--I shouldn't be hungry for it, you know.'

`Not at first, perhaps,' said the Hatter: `but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.'

`Is that the way YOU manage?' Alice asked.

The Hatter shook his head mournfully. `Not I!' he replied. `We quarrelled last March--just before HE went mad, you know--' (pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare,) `--it was at the great concert given by the Queen

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of Hearts, and I had to sing

"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at!"

You know the song, perhaps?'

`I've heard something like it,' said Alice.

`It goes on, you know,' the Hatter continued, `in this way:--

"Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle-- "'

Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep `Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle--' and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.

`Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said the Hatter, `when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, "He's murdering the time! Off with his head!"'

`How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Alice.

`And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, `he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.'

A bright idea came into Alice's head. `Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked.

`Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh: `it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.'

`Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice.

`Exactly so,' said the Hatter: `as the things get used up.'

`But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask.

`Suppose we change the subject,' the March Hare interrupted, yawning. `I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.'

`I'm afraid I don't know one,' said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.

`Then the Dormouse shall!' they both cried. `Wake up, Dormouse!' And

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they pinched it on both sides at once.

The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. `I wasn't asleep,' he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: `I heard every word you fellows were saying.'

`Tell us a story!' said the March Hare.

`Yes, please do!' pleaded Alice.

`And be quick about it,' added the Hatter, `or you'll be asleep again before it's done.'

`Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; `and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well--'

`What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

`They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

`They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked; `they'd have been ill.'

`So they were,' said the Dormouse; `VERY ill.'

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: `But why did they live at the bottom of a well?'

`Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'

`You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

`Nobody asked YOUR opinion,' said Alice.

`Who's making personal remarks now?' the Hatter asked triumphantly.

Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated

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her question. `Why did they live at the bottom of a well?'

The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, `It was a treacle-well.'

`There's no such thing!' Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went `Sh! sh!' and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, `If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.'

`No, please go on!' Alice said very humbly; `I won't interrupt again. I dare say there may be ONE.'

`One, indeed!' said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. `And so these three little sisters--they were learning to draw, you know- -'

`What did they draw?' said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.

`Treacle,' said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.

`I want a clean cup,' interrupted the Hatter: `let's all move one place on.'

He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate.

Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: `But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?'

`You can draw water out of a water-well,' said the Hatter; `so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well--eh, stupid?'

`But they were IN the well,' Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.

`Of course they were', said the Dormouse; `--well in.'

This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.

`They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; `and they drew all manner of things-

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-everything that begins with an M--'

`Why with an M?' said Alice.

`Why not?' said the March Hare.

Alice was silent.

The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: `--that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness-- you know you say things are "much of a muchness"--did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?'

`Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, `I don't think--'

`Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.

`At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!'

Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. `That's very curious!' she thought. `But everything's curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.' And in she went.

Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. `Now, I'll manage better this time,' she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocked) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and THEN--she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.

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Glossary

In the Brontës’ day most of the inhabitants of Haworth were dialect speakers; and since Charlotte Brontë complained that there was not a single ‘educated’ family in the place, it is likely that the ‘maisters’ – the mill owners, gentlemen farmers, and independent craftsmen- used at least some dialect forms as well as broad northern vowels, especially when speaking to their employees. The well-educated and the well-travelled are portrayed as equally fluent and forcible in dialect, ‘standard’ English, and French, but they were probably unusual in keeping the two English forms distinct. Within Haworth Parsonage, the dialect of the faithful servant Tabitha Aykroyd, born and brought up in Yorkshire, was familiar from an early age, and it was faithfully recorded in the speech of Hannah in Jane Eyre. Branwell Brontë probably heard more freely spoken dialect than his sisters. He and Charlotte used vigorous, fluent, dialect speech to characterize the servants and cronies of their Angrian ‘great men’. The ‘strong twang’ of General Thornton is used both for comic purposes and to indicate his honesty. The brontës would be alert to the pronunciation and nuances of the local dialect partly because their own speech, influenced by their Irish father, Cornish mother and aunt, and the various teachers in their schools, was different: Mary Tailor recorded that when charlotte first arrived at Roe Head School she ‘spoke with a strong Irish accent’. Emily was intrigued by Tabby’s Yorkshire version of ‘peel a potato’, and sought to write it down phonetically ‘pillapatate’. She would later represent with a high degree of phonetic accuracy the dialect speakers in Wuthering Heights. Yorkshire people would consider that the Brontë sisters spoke ‘less gruff than we talk here, and softer’, as Ellen Dean

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remarked of Edgar Linton in Wuthering Heights, a novel in which speech differences have a strong influence on personal relationships. The surly ‘gruff’ servant Joseph, a broad dialect speaker, resents the refined speech of the Lintons, and affects not to understand Isabella’s request to accompany her to the house: ‘Mim! mim! mim! Did iver Christian body hear owt like it? Minching un’ munching! Hah can aw tell whet ye say?’ In Jane Eyre too, Jane and the ‘coarsely-clad little peasants’ who are her scholars at Morton at first ‘ have a difficulty in understanding each other’s language’.

The Brontës also knew and admired the writing of James Hogg. The vigorous dialect of the servants, the gaoler, and others in Hoggs the private memoirs and confessions of a Justified Sinner, and its function of part of a choric commentary on the tense drama of the

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main events, would encourage the Brontës to follow suit. They would recognize the close kinship of Scottish and Yorkshire dialect, in for example the maid’s testimony at Bell Calvert’s trial: ‘Na, na, I wadna swear to ony siller spoons that ever war made …lay them by, lay them by, an’ gie the poor woman her spoons again.’ Charlotte Brontë also loved and often quoted Scottish ballads. Some echoes of Irish speech may be detected.

Mr Brontë had used an approximation of Irish pronunciation for some words spoken by Nanny in The Maid of Killarney, and the Brontës probably knew Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800) with its gossiping newsmonger and dialect speaker Judy M’Quirk, and the narrator Thady, whose garrulous narrative is interspersed with dialect words which as Edgeworth notes, were characteristic of many of Thady’s rank. Like Charlotte Brontë and unlike Emily, edgeworth glosses some of the dialect words and customs, noting that ‘ childer’ was used for ‘ children ( as it was in Yorkshire), ‘ gossoon’ for a little boy, ‘ fairy-mounts’ for barrows, and ‘banshee’ for ‘ a species of aristocratic fairly’ whose singing warned of imminent death.Charlotte was to use the ‘banshee’ hauntingly in her writing.

Here is a list of dialect words used in the Brontës’ works ; they are based in part on K.M. Petyt’s article ‘The Dialect speech in Wuthering Heights.

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Dialect word Meaning

[1] aat out [2] abaat about [3] aboon above [4] agate /agait on hand, afoot [5] ahint behind [6] ahr our [7] allas / allus always [8] alow ablaze [9] an if [10] anent opposite, against [11] another guess a different [12] as what whatever [13] as where wherever [14] ask ( Scottish) lizard [15] atin eating [16] at nothing for anything [17] at onst at once [18] aught anything [19] aw I (1st person pronoun) [20] awn own [21] aye yes [22] ayont (Scottish) beyond, after [23] bahn (to do) bound to do, going to do [24] baht without [25] bamming playing a trick on [26] ban curse

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[27] band rope, string [28] barn bairn, child [29] beaten exhausted [30] beck small brook, stream [31] ben without, right inside [32] bicker flicker [33] bide live, dwell [34] biggin’ building [35] bits of small, of little value [36] boddle / bodle ( Scottish) Scottish coin of little value see ‘plack’ [37] bogard ghost [38] bogle ( Scottish) goblin [39] boit boot [40] bout time, occasion [41] bow ( Scottish verb) bay, bark [42] brae ( Scottish) slope above a river- bank, hill-slope [43] braid ( Scottish) broad [44] braw fine, brave, handsome [45] brust burst, break [46] bucking-basket laundry-basket [47] bullister ( Scottish) sloe, wild plum [48] call abuse, find fault [49] callant ( Scottish) lad, youth [50] cannie ( Scottish) lucky,safe to meddle with

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[51] cant / canty brisk, cheerful [52] cantrip ( Scottish) witch’s trick, or any mischievous conduct [53] cheap ( to be cheap of ) to get off lightly with [54] childer children [55] chitty-faced having a small or a babyish face [56] clatter to beat, strike / chatter, gossip [57] clishma-claver ( Scottish) foolish talk [58] clomp walk heavily [59] crack brisk talk, gossip/ lively lad, a wag [60] cranky shaky, crazy [61] crock smut, smudge [62] croft enclosed ground used for tillage or pasture [63] cushat wood-pigeon or ring -dove [64] custen dahn cast down [65] dahn down [66] daht doubt, be afraid [67] dead-thraw death-throe [68] dean dingle, deep hollow [69] deave aht knock out [70] den dingle, deep hollow between hills [71] dip-tail pied wagtail [72] doit small coin; bit; jot

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[73] donned, donning dressed, dressing [74] down-draughts down-dragging or depressing influences

[75] down of distrustful of [76] dree ( as an adjective ) cheerless, dreary [77] dree once weird suffer one’s destiny [78] E / Ee I ( 1st-person pronoun ) [79] eea, eees yes [80] elf-bolt fairy arrowhead [81] enah presently, soon [82] end, better better kind or class [83] ern eagle [84] ever ( seldom or ) ever ( seldom or ) [85] ew-platter plate made of yew -wood [86] faal / fahl foul, evil, ugly [87] fain of glad about [88] fairish fairy [89] faishion fashion [90] fand found [91] fashion bring onself [92] feck part, portion [93] felly fellow, admirer [94] fettle off kill [95] fettle up tidy up [96] fey fated to die

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[97] flay /fley frighten [98] flaysome fearful / awful [99] flighted frightened [100] flit, flitting move, removal [101] fornent opposite [102] fra from [103] frame go / invent [104] fresh partly intoxicated [105] fry state of worry or perplexity [106] gaberlunzie beggar [107] gait, gate way [108] gang go [109] gaumless stupid [110] gawking staring, gaping [111] gein / gien given [112] get agate get started, begin [113] get owered pass over, finish [114] getten to got to, reached [115] gird fit, spasm of pain [116] girn grin / snarl / show the teeth [117] girt great [118] gleg sharp, keen [119] gnarl snarl [120] gooid good [121] grat ( Scottish ) wept [122] grave (Scottish ) bury [123] greasehorn flatterer

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[124] guess, another a different [125] hahs / hahse house [126] hahsiver howsoever, anyway [127] happed stacked, heaped up [128] happen perhaps [129] hard-handed stingy, close-fisted [130] harry carry [131] haulf, by the ‘by the half’ = much [132] hazing a thrashing [133] hisseln / hissen himself [134] hit (verb) reach [135] hoile /hoyle hole / room / place /corner/ opening [136] holly-oaks hollyhocks [137] holm meadow, especially near the river [138] hoody piebald grey and bl crow [139] hor her [140] hotch heave [141] house main communal room [142] howe of night middle of the night [143] howsiver / howsomdever however [144] ing meadow, especially near a river [145] intull into [146] jocks provision

225

[147] just i’ now / just e’ now by and by, ere long [148] kail ( Scottish ) cabbage [149] keck, give a to make a sound as if

about to

vomit

[150] kedge brisk, lively

[151] ken ( Scottish ) know

[152] kittle fickle, unstable

[153] lace beat, thrash

[154] lady-clock ladybird

[155] laik play a game

[156] laith barn

[157] lake-lasses playmates, companions

[158] Lallans ( Scottish ) Lowland Scottish dialect

[159] lameter ( Scottish ) cripple

[160] larum uproar, hubbub

[161] lift rear up

[162] lig dahn lie down

[163] lig hold of lay hold of

[164] light of chance upon

[165] like, loike so to speak, as it were

[166] likely desirable, fitting

[167] likker more likely

[168] linn ( Scottish ) waterfall

226

[169] loike like

[170] loundering severe, resounding

[171] low ( sb.) flame

[172] lugs hears

[173] madling fool, flighty creature

[174] mak’ make, sort, species

[175] marred spoilt

[176] mask face, head,

manifestation

[177] maun ( Scottish ) must

[178] mavis song-thrush

[179] maw my

[180] measter master

[181] meeterly tolerably

[182] mell meddle, interfere

[183] mensful decent

[184] messter Mister

[185] mich much

[186] middle-night (Scottish) midnight

[187] mim prim, affected

[188] minching mincing ( speech)

[189] mools ( Scottish ) mould, earth

[190] much made of made much of, treated

227

as a favourite

[191] mud ( verb preterit ) might, must

[192] muh may

[193] mun must

[194] nab prominent hill

[195] nabbut / nobbut only

[196] nave fist

[197] nicher snicker, cackle, neigh

[198] noan not / none

[199] nor than

[200] norther / nother neither

[201] nothing, at for anything

[202] nowt nothing, worthless

thing

[203] o’ered / owered over, finished

[204] offald / offalld worthless, wicked

[205] oftens often

[206] on of

[207] onding on heavy with ( snow )

[208] ‘only lonely

[209] onst once

[210] orderations arrangements,

228

management

[211] owered over / finished

[212] owt anything

[213] pabble ( verb ) bubble

[214] pale t’ guilp off knock the pan off

[215] pared changed for the

worse

[216] pawky shrewd, knowing

[217] pawsed kicked or pushed

[218] penny-fee wages, money

[219] piecen join broken threads

in spinning

[220] pike turnpike gate

[221] pine starve

[222] plack small copper coin

[223] plack and bodle to the last farthing

[224] play up scold

[225] plisky rage, tantrum

[226] plisky ( Scottish ) trick

[227] plotter blunder, flounder

[228] poortith poverty

[229] pooty small, young

[230] praise / prease object of praise

229

[231] put about vex, harass

[232] quaigh ( Scottish ) drinking-cup,

sometimes made of

Wood

[233] quean saucy girl

[234] raised highly excited

[235] ranny sharp, shrewish

[236] raton / rotten / ratton rat

[237] re-piecen rejoin threads

[238] reaming foaming, brimful

[239] redd up tidied up

[240] red-wud ( Scottish ) completely mad

[241] reek ( Scottish ) thick smoke

[242] reeve to twist

[243] rig ridge

[244] rive pull with force

[245] road, that in that way

[246] roup cry, shout, roar

[247] rum fine, good, valuable

[248] rusty ( of meat ) rancid

[249] sackless dispirited

[250] sair (Scottish ) sore, sad

[251] scorney scornful,

230

contemptuous

[252] scrawk scratch or mark

with a pen

[253] scroop back, spine

[254] scrunty ( Scottish ) stunted

[255] sheepshanks, na ( Scottish ) a person of no small

importance

[256] shoo she

[257] shoon shoes

[258] side move aside, tidy

away

[259] sin since

[260] skelp ( Scottish ) bound along, move

briskly

[261] skift shift, skip

[262] smoor smother

[263] snook poke one’s nose in

[264] snoozled nuzzled

[265] snow, wreath of / snow-wreath snowdrift

[266] somut something

[267] sort deal effectively with

[268] sough ditch, boggy stream

231

[269] sough / sugh soft murmur (of

water )

[270] spang spring, leap

[271] stalled of bored with, weary of

[272] stark rigid, stiff in death

[273] starved very cold, frozen

[274] starving freezing

[275] stoup drinking vessel

[276] sumph simpleton, blockhead

[277] sumphishness stupidity

[278] sup, a good a fair amount

[279] syne (Scottish ) later

[280] tached taught

[281] taed ( Scottish ) toad

[282] tak’ tent / take tent take care, beware

[283] taking plight / state of

anger

[284] teed tied

[285] tha / thaw thou, you

[286] thereanent about that matter

[287] thible wooden stirring

stick or spoon

[288] thrang / throng busy, dense, close,

232

thick

[289] thrapple / trapple ( Scottish ) windpipe, throat

[290] threap quarrel, rebuke,

assert

vehemently

[291] tinkler tinker, gibsy,

outlaw

[292] tint ( participle ) lost

[293] tit small horse, nag

[294] to-nig last night ( perhaps

only said in

the morning )

[295] toppin head

[296] trade course of action,

conduct

[297] tuh you (2nd person

singular )

[298] tull to

[299] twal’ ( Scottish ) twelve

[300] tyne ( Scottish ) lose

[301] unlikely unsuitable,

unconvenient

[302] up uh set on, determined

233

[303] used coming used to come

[304] uses burning is in the habit of

burning

[305] usquebaugh ( Scottish ) whisky

[306] varmint / vermin rascal ( applied

playfully to an

animal or child )

[307] war worse

[308] wark work, trouble

[309] waur ( Scottish ) worse

[310] wearifu’ ( Scottish ) causing trouble or

weariness

[311] weird destiny

[312] wer our

[313] whamled rolled

[314] while + time until

[315] whudder ( Scottish ) blow wildly,

stormily

[316] wick ( adjective) alive, lively

[317] wick ( subject ) week, weeks

[318] wisht / whisht hush

[319] wollsome wholesome

234

[320] wor, war were, was

[321] work ( subject ) fuss, disturbance

[322] worky-day workaday

[323] wuther ( vb. And sb.) blow wildly,

storm

[324] wynd lane, alley

[325] yamp ( Scottish ) hungry, peckish

[326] yate gate

[327] yaw you

[328] yellow-wymed ( Scottish ) yellow-bellied

[329] yourn yours

235

236

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