think of this as a kind of ‘word magic’ (for example, Sullivan 1985)—and numerous
fantastic fictions so represent it—though it is in fact an explicable linguistic function.
The socio-linguistic contexts of text production and reception are important
considerations for any account of reading processes. But beyond satisfying a basic
human need for contact, reading can also give many kinds of pleasure, though the
pleasures of reading are not discovered in a social or linguistic vacuum: as we first learn
how to read we also start learning what is pleasurable and what not, and even what is
good writing and what not. Our socio-linguistic group, and especially its formal
educational structures, tends to precondition what constitutes a good story, a good
argument, a good joke, and the better our command of socio-linguistic codes the greater
is our appreciation. In other words, we learn to enjoy the process as well as the product.
Writing and reading are also very individual acts, however, and the pleasure of reading
includes some sense of the distinctive style of a writer or a text. One primary function of
stylistic description is to contribute to the pleasure in the text by defining the individual
qualities of what is vaguely referred to as the ‘style’ of a writer or text.
Stylistic description can be attempted by means of several methodologies. These range
from an impressionistic ‘literary stylistics’, which is characteristic of most discussions of
the language of children’s literature, to complex systemic analyses. The latter can offer
very precise and delicate descriptions, but have the limitation that non-specialists may
find them impenetrable. This article works within the semiotic analysis developed in
contemporary critical linguistics (Fairclough 1989; Stephens 1992a).
To discuss the textuality of children’s fiction one has to begin by considering some
assumptions about the nature of language on which it is grounded. Linguists recognise
that language is a social semiotic, a culturally patterned system of signs used to
communicate about things, ideas or concepts. As a system constructed within culture,
it is not founded on any essential bond between a verbal sign and its referent (Stephens
1992a: 246–247). This is an important point to grasp, because much children’s fiction is
written and mediated under the contrary, essentialist assumption, and this has major
implications both for writing objectives and for the relationships between writers and
readers. As mentioned above, fantasy writing in particular is apt to assert the
inextricability of word and thing, but the assumption also underlies realistic writing
which purports to minimise the distance between life and fiction, or which pivots on the
evolution of a character’s essential selfhood, and it often informs critical suspicion of texts
which foreground the gap between signs and things. The essentialist position has been
conveniently (over-)stated by Molly Hunter:
the belief underlying the practice of magic has a direct bearing on the whole concept
of language... The meaning of every word, it is argued, is innate to its sound and
structure. Thus the word itself is the essence of what it names; and to capture that
essence in speech is to be able to direct its power to a desired end.
Hunter 1976:107–108Later in the same paper Hunter balances this position against a writer’s more sober
awareness ‘that words may be defined only to the extent of ensuring their correct use in
context’ (109), describing the difference as a contradiction which ‘all creative writing is
58 LINGUISTICS AND STYLISTICS