because the primary association of beard is with human (male) facial hair, and hence is
always to some degree figurative when transferred to animals or plants. In such ways,
Higglety Pigglety Pop! is a richly subversive text, playing on meanings to such an extent
as to suggest that if allowed free play, language will tend to be uncontainable by
situation, hovering always on the boundary of excess. Such a view of language, however,
tends to be uncommon in the domain of children’s literature.
The issue of sign/referent relationship is of central interest here because it bears
directly on linguistic function in children’s fiction and the notion of desirable
significances. The assumption that the relationship is direct and unproblematic has the
initial effect of producing what might be termed closed meanings. The Tolkien example
is especially instructive because it explicitly shows how language which is potentially
open, enabling a variety of potential reader responses, is narrowed by paradigmatic
recursiveness and essentialism. Writers will, of course, often aim for such specification,
but what are the implications if virtually all meaning in a text is implicitly closed? The
outcome points to an invisible linguistic control by writer over reader. As Hunt has
argued, attempts to exercise such control are much less obvious when conveyed by
stylistic features than by lexis or story existents (Hunt 1991:109).
A related linguistic concept of major importance for the issue of language choice and
writerly control is register, the principle which governs the choice among various
possible linguistic realisations of the same thing. Register refers to types of language
variation which collocate with particular social situations and written genres. Socially,
for example, people choose different appropriate language variations for formal and
informal occasions, for friendly disputes and angry arguments, and for specialised
discourses: science, sport, computing, skipping rope games, role-play, and so on, all
have particular registers made up of configurations of lexical and syntactical choices.
Narrative fictions will seek to replicate such registers, but also, as with a wide range of
writing genres, develop distinctive registers of their own. Genres familiar in children’s
fiction such as folk and fairy stories, ghost and terror stories, school stories, teen
romance, and a host of others— use some readily identifiable registers. Consider the use
of register in the following passage from Anna Fienberg’s Ariel, Zed and the Secret of Life.
It describes three girls watching a horror movie, but one of them (Ariel) is giggling:
When the girls looked back at the screen, the scene had changed. It was dusk, and
shadows bled over the ground. A moaning wind had sprung up, and somewhere,
amongst the trees, an owl hooted.
‘Ooh, look,’ hissed Lynn, her nails digging into her friend Mandy’s arm. ‘Is that
him there, crouching behind that bush? Tell me what happens. I’m not looking any
more.’
‘The nurse is saying goodnight,’ Mandy whispered, ‘she’s leaving. She’ll have to go
right past him.’
The Monster From Out of Town was, indeed, breathing heavily behind a camellia
bush. His clawed hands crushed flowers to a perfumed pulp, which made you think
of what he would do to necks...
Ariel grinned. The monster’s mask was badly made and his costume looked much
too tight...THEORY AND CRITICAL APPROACHES 61