Page 142 - Literacy in the New Media Age

MEANING AND FRAMES 131

2 That rejection casts us out to sea on the question ‘What might that relationship
be?’
3 That rejection casts us out to sea on the question ‘what might that
relationship be’.
4 That rejection casts us out to sea on the question of what might that
relationship be?
5 That rejection casts us out to sea on the question of what that relationship
might be.
6 That rejection casts us out to sea on the question of the possible relationship.
7 The question of the possible relationship casts us out to sea.
8 Questioning possible relationships casts us out to sea.

The author chose to leave the question in its speech-like form, but moved it one
step away from direct reported speech and its punctuation, somewhat towards a
more writing-like form. Punctuation is not needed here for two reasons: the
speech-like separateness of clauses is no longer present, and the two clauses have
been integrated to a degree that goes beyond the need to use punctuation to mark
structural dispositions. One might say that syntactic means have taken over from
punctuation. In fact, we might say that the more writing-like writing is, the less is
there a need to mark features of speech, features which rely on ‘sub-vocalisation’
of varying degrees. The point on the line that has been chosen by this author
declares his affinities with the mode of speech, and I assume with the social
organisations that go with that: more open, more equal, more dynamic. It is a
consistent feature of his style. This place on the line also speaks of tensions,
which lends a certain angularity and masculinity to the writing. Its meaning is
precisely the meaning of that position: why not, for instance, go further towards
the more integrated, the more writing-like, the more formally academic writing?
The next two examples are also concerned with the connectedness of speech
and writing. Consider this sentence, and in particular the listing:

Our method will be to first consider the implications for theory of the four
positions articulated in the introduction and then to take up the specific
issues of (a) empiricism in positivism and beyond (b) post-structuralist
social theory and (c) criticism in the land of the floating signifier.

Why did the writer not place a comma at these three points? Of course we cannot
know and asking the author would not provide a definitive answer either, but we
can put a comma there and ask about the difference which that makes. Without
the comma it is possible to read across the conjunction between these clause-
elements quite quickly; with the comma there, a pause seems (is?) indicated,
even called for; its duration would depend on the reader’s own speech patterns in
this case.
Two points emerge from this. On the one hand, the comma is at least a trace of
this as a speech-like form, it insists on the prior history of this sentence structure