?What is deviation
Deviations from linguistic norms are unusual combinations of linguistic features that are ungrammatical or constitute uncommon semantic combinations, e.g., unusual metaphors. Repetitions can also be regarded as a form of deviation in that they go against normal usage patterns by being over frequent. Deviations from textual patterns can theoretically be described as the result of comparisons against various norms. However, the textual patterning that is referred to as foregrounding is “motivated specifically for literary aesthetic purposes” and this is different from the personal linguistic preferences of an author. To focus on the aesthetic purposes, it is useful to distinguish deviation as a linguistic phenomenon from foregrounding as a psychological phenomenon. Foregrounding is the psychological effect brought about in the reader or hearer when deviant features of a text are made perceptually prominent.
Types of Deviation
Lexical Deviation: the invention of new ” words” ( i.e. items of vocabulary ) is one of the more obvious ways in which a poet may exceed normal resources of the language. Not that it is the prerogative solely of the poet: journalists, copywriters, and scientists. Even ordinary citizens in ordinary conversations quite often stumble into neologism as the readiest way to express their feelings or opinions. The new words are called NONCE-Formation if they are made up for the nonce , for a single occasion only, rather than as serious attempts to augment the English words tock for some new need. The invention of new words are called neologism which means that an existing rule ( of word-formation) is applied with greater generality than is customary: that the usual restrictions on its operation are waived in a given instance. For example the English rule of word-formation which permits the prefixation of ( for ) to a verb, to convey the meaning “beforehand” as in foresee, foreknow, and so on. If this rule were completely free in its application, we would use verbs such fore sell (sell in advance) or for appear ( appear in advance) without even noticing their oddity.
Grammatical Deviation: there is a distinction between DEEP STRUCTURE and the SURFACE STRUCTURE of a sentence. The deep structure directly reflects the meaning of the sentence, whereas the surface structure relates to the way in which a sentence is actually uttered. For example, in the passive sentence ” Gladstone was revered by his supporters”, the identification of the logical subject )his supporters) belongs to the deep or underlying structure, whereas the identification of the ” grammatical subject ” belongs to the surface structure> Deep structure may be characterized as the semantic end of syntax and surface structure as the phonological end, as it specifies the actual forms which are uttered and the sequence in which they occur. Violations of surface structure are superficial not only in the technical sense, but also in the sense that they have no fundamental effect on the way in which a sentence is understood. Into this category fall violations which could be described as bad or incorrect grammar. Most deviation of deep structure can be treated as cases of mistaken selection and the interpretation of the deviation consists not in mapping the deviation from on to a single normal form which it most closely resembles, but rather in relating it to a whole class of normal forms which could replace it in that position.
Phonological Deviation: literary recitation is clearly marked off form ordinary speech by a set of deviant phonological characteristics. It appears also that certain nineteenthcentury poets placed words stresses in unusual places. Whether this was merely for exigencies of meter, out of archaic affection, or out of obedience to some obscure principle of euphony, is hard to determine.
Graph logical Deviation: to the extent that spelling represents pronunciation, any strangeness of written form. But there is also a kind of graph logical deviation which need have no counterpart in speech. The obvious example is the characteristic line-by-line arrangement of poetry on the printed page with irregular righthand margins. The typographical line of poetry, like the typographical stanza, is a unit which is not paralleled in non-poetic varieties of English: it is independent of, and capable of interacting with the standard units of punctuation. This interaction is a special communicative resource of poetry. It is clear that when lines on the page don’t correspond to any phonological reality, verse lineation becomes a structuring device with no justification beyond itself.
Semitic Deviation: it is reasonable to translate sematic deviation mentally into “non-sense” or “absurdity” , this is clear in the case of an equally celebrated paradox, Keats’s Beauty is truth, truth beauty, which equates, as baldy and bluntly as in a mathematically important abstractions: beauty = truth. This definition of truth and beauty in terms of one another is at odds with what any dictionary attempting to record customary usage would say. For example, when we say this story is beautiful, we decidedly do not imply this story is true. So, in poetry, metaphor is the process whereby literal absurdity leads the mind to comprehension on a figurative plane.
Dialectal Deviation: dialect is a minor form of license not generally available to the average writer of functional prose, who is expected write in the generally accepted and understood dialect known as standard English. But it is, of course, quite commonly used by story-tellers and humorists for the poet, dialectism may serve a number of purposes as depicting life as seen through the experience and ethos of one particular section of English speaking society.
Deviation of Register: it is not that borrowing language form other non-poetic registers, is a new invention, but that poets with unprecedented audacity. Modern poets have asserted their freedom from constrains of poetic language. Register borrowing in poetry is almost always accompanied by further incongruity of Register mixing, or the use in the same text of features characteristic of different registers.
Deviation of Historical period: it means what a poet sees as his linguistic heritage may even include dead languages such as Latin and Greek. A type of historical license current in the period of neoclassical culture following renaissance was he use of a word off Latin origin in a sense reconstructed from the literal Latin.
