Rhymes, Riddles, Puns And the Semantic Universe: the places you'll go when writing
By K.Allen McNamara
March 2nd is the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel aka Dr. Seuss. The popular children’s author - responsible for teaching generations to read through his catchy rhymes, tempo, word play and word placement, originally began his career as an ad-man. Yes, advertising. Advertising messages must pack as much persuasive power into as small a linguistic space as possible. Linguistics, the science of language, and its influence on writing is evident in advertising and in the success of a Dr. Seuss’s stories.
Dr. Seuss relied heavily upon rhyming. “Everyone like rhymes," said Dr. Steven Pinker, the author of The Language Instinct (HarperCollins) and a linguist who directs the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rap artists declaim in rhymes. Gifted orators, like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, use rhyme. Irregular English verbs fall into groups based on rhyme: ring rang, sing sang. But the question, Dr. Pinker asks, is, "Why is rhyme so pleasurable?" One theory is that humans like anything that purifies the basics of their world, he said, and that resonates with the way the brain decodes the blooming, buzzing confusion out there. We like stripes and plaids, we like periodic and harmonic sounds and we like rhymes. No Boundaries.” (http://bit.ly/rhymesreason)
Rhyming is just one way the Brain appreciates language and its rules and the violation of its the rules to please readers and listeners alike. Consider also riddles and puns which involve word play and are subjective. Peter McGraw of the Human Research Lab of the University of Colorado, Boulder explains why puns, are considered high brow in the scheme of language play. “They can be a demonstration of wit, of cleverness,” McGraw says. “You’re relying on a person’s ability to parse language, to understand the nuances and complexities of words.” (Beck http://bit.ly/Punsmakeusgroan)
Likewise riddles or word puzzles attract fans across cultures. As Dr. Dansei notes in his article, Puzzles and the Brain “The thinking involved in solving puzzles can thus be characterized as a blend of imaginative association and memory. It is this blend... that leads us to literally see the pattern or twist that a puzzle conceals. It is a kind of "clairvoyance" that typically provokes an Aha! Effect.”
The correlation the brain sees between two words or a string of words hung together in a sentence, paragraph, simile or a metaphor etc... matter because how we select or make a word choice says a great deal about who we are. Or rather who our characters are and about the world they inhabit and the solutions they choose for the problems they face. Consider for a moment, what your word choice or rather the word choice of your character reveals about that character or his/her world. Words matter and their placement (structure) matters for your characters; however, there is the semantic universe of each character that must be considered as well. The semantic universe - the meaning each person assigns to a given word varies from person to person, from reader to reader and from character to character.
In college, I was lucky enough to take Intro to Linguistics with Dr. Elaine Chaika. Dr. Chaika was a powerful and admirable instructor. I distinctly remember the dendrites firing as Dr. Chaika related how no two people share the same semantic universe. This statement regarding the snowflake-like quality of a person’s semantic universe she then supported with a humorous anecdote of which she was the protagonist. Dr. Chaika related how she went to the supermarket in search of a new dish washing soap that according to the advertisements was tough on grease. She marched up and down the dish soap aisle scanning the shelves. Finally she enlisted the help of a stock boy. “Do you know what it’s called?” He asked. “Aware. Aware dish soap. It’s new.” Dr. Chaika reported telling him. The stock boy shook his head. “We don’t have a dish soap called Aware.” “I know it exists.” She insisted. “It’s new. It’s blue.” With this last statement the boy’s face brightened. “Ah, you mean Dawn. It’s over here.” And he led her to Dawn dish soap which was indeed blue and new to the market. In her head Dr. Chaika explained, she had remembered the name Dawn as Aware because in her semantic universe she had cataloged dawn and aware as meaning the same thing, as being interchangeable. In short, it dawned on her that although the dish soap was not called Aware or rather she became aware that the dish soap was called Dawn thanks to an astute stock boy.
Dr. Steven Pinker, cognitive scientist, psycholinguist and author, explored such differences of semantic universe in his book: The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. “There are two likely habitats. One is the world, where we find the things that a word refers to. The other is in the head, where we find people’s understanding of how a word may be used.”
Pinker’s explanation of how we name or assign names and sort objects by name underscores Dr. Chaika’s story. As a writer, you cannot or should not assume the reader always knows what you mean. This explains why when you workshop a piece in a writing class some your contemporaries will not understand “what you meant by that.” As a writer, you must trust the reader to bring the ability of extrapolation to the novel and the ability to discern subtext and to conjure a world from the words you, the writer so deftly puts down; but as the writer, you must also be aware of the words you chose to evoke the necessary extrapolations and constructions. Words matter and structure, the placement of the words, matter; the semantic universe matters. Remember you will not get it right for everyone but you may get close if you drop enough detritus for your readers to latch onto.
Pinker as a linguist has explored many avenues regarding the relationship between the writer and language. As a psycholinguist, Pinker enjoys reading style manuals - wherein the essence of the very rules for writing should be captured. However, in his book The Sense of Style: the Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Pinker asserts in his prologue that “Style manuals that are innocent of linguistics also are crippled in dealing the aspect of writing that evokes the most emotion: correct and incorrect usage.” Words - their placement and their choice matter to the emotion of writing. Admittedly Pinker is playing off the definition of “sense”; he wants it to be thought of as a sense like hearing, touch, sight… or in essence a feel for how the language should be used to convey the message that the author or orator seeks. Pinker argues Style is necessary: “Style... adds beauty to the world. To a literate reader, a crisp sentence, an arresting metaphor, a witty aside, an elegant turn of phrase are among life’s greatest pleasures.”
Pinker’s desire was to forge a Style Manual less concerned with the constrictive rules that strangle the emotion of language and more focused on how the placement of the language evoked that emotion. In an article for New Republic Pinker gives several examples of instances where prescriptive rules would have render many memorable lines of scripts or novels less memorable and noteworthy had the authors conformed to the actual rules.
As a writer, you need to be aware of the prescriptive rules of language, the nuances of word choice and your own semantic universe among the many other ingredients of crafting your novel. So, grab your helmet, buckle up and hang on. The ride to creating a story is guaranteed to be a bumpy one, albeit an interesting one. Just remember, "You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go." - Dr. Seuss from Oh, The Places You'll Go. Good Luck! And March Forth. (Pun intended).
