Nina Nørgaard

Disordered Collarettes and Uncovered Tables: Negative Polarity as a Stylistic Device in Joyce's 'Two Gallants'

Abstract This article examines the use of negative polarity as a stylistic device in James Joyces short story, “Two Gallants” (1992 [1914]). The article begins with a brief account of various approaches to negative polarity, focusing in particular on theoretical paradigms that favour the pragmatic functions of negative constructions in context. After this theoretical overview, the various approaches are applied to an analysis of Joyces story, in the course of which it is demonstrated that although negatives are not a salient feature of the text they are nevertheless a significant meaning-making resource worth considering in analyses of literature. In particular the article aims to demonstrate how the linguistic theory of polyphony known as ScaPoLine would be a useful tool for those who wish to understand and describe the various voices that are coded by negatives and the way negative polarity is, accordingly, at times intimately connected to focalisation and narrative perspective.

Grammar and Literature

At its most basic level, literature is language. Through language, literary texts represent—or rather construct—characters, settings, plots, experiences, feelings, and ideas, and while linguistic knowledge is by no means a prerequisite for the analysis of literature, such knowledge may help the literary critic understand and describe the ways in which meaning is created by linguistic means in literary texts. Keywords: methods; grammar; interpretation; stylistics