Our Conclusions:
As with the Jane Austen passage, the grammatical analysis reveals the
exact formal nature of the parallelisms noted in our discussion of task
F. There is more parallelism than Steinbeck, but it is nothing like
as complex and extensive as the Austen.
Overall, the grammar of the Lawrence and Steinbeck passages are simpler
than Jane Austen's. Compared with the Steinbeck, the Lawrence passage
could be said to be both simpler and a bit more complex at the same
time. Seven of Lawrence's 11 sentences are one-clause, simple sentences.
Only one sentence (S4) is a compound sentence, and it contains just
two clauses compounded together, which we noticed was typical for Steinbeck.
But two of the sentences (S10 and S11) are as complex as the one grammatically
complex sentence in the Steinbeck passage. This grammatical account
correlates well with what we noticed when we looked at sentence length
in this passage.
One of the reasons for the simplicity of the majority of Lawrence's
sentences is that he seems to make a point of dividing up what would
be compound sentences for other writers into simple sentences beginning
with a conjunction. Five of Lawrence's sentences begin with a conjunction
('And' or 'But' in this passage). This is the sort of thing that school
students are often advised not to do, because it is regarded as 'bad
style'. But Lawrence is a skilled writer, ignoring the advice of the
prescriptivists for tactical reasons. By chopping potentially compound
sentences up into simple sentences in this way, Lawrence gets more points
of strong emphasis into his writing (the beginnings and ends of sentences
are the most perceptually prominent for readers). This helps to make
his style seem strong and 'muscular'.
But he could produce this effect just by using short simple sentences,
without the use of sentence-initial conjunctions. The initial conjunctions
produce what might be called an 'additive' style of writing. But note
also that two of the five sentence-initial conjunctions are 'But'. So
Lawrence also wants to produce strong effects of contrast as well as
addition (note also the similar use of negation in S6 and S7). This
use of sentence-initial conjunctions is characteristic of Lawrence's
style, and is another factor in our sense of the power and strong rhetoric
in his writing.
Back to task
G
