ANALYSIS OF THE SHORT STORY “THE LOTTERY” ACCORDING TO THE SEVEN STANDARDS OF TEXT LINGUISTICS

 

       In this study of mine I will analyze the short story “The Lottery” according to the seven standards of text linguistics. The story I chose is written by Shirley Jackson. The short story is taken from a textbook used in ELT Department of Istanbul University during “Advanced Reading Skills” class in fall 2001-2002. The seven standards to be examined are as follows: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality.

 

       As any kind of text is considered to be a semantic unit, it needs some aspects to keep it united. These aspects are called recurrences, parallelism, paraphrasing, pro-forms, ellipses, tense and aspect, junctions, intonation and keys. According to Halliday and Hassan these aspects keep the text as a whole and contribute into the continuity of the text.

 

      My first duty is to summarize “The Lottery” which later will be examined in details. “The Lottery” is a strange and disturbing story. It is simple and straightforward, but with a horrifying ending. Townspeople have a lottery every year in June. They gather together in the square of the town and every householder of a family chooses among the papers, one of which is marked, whoever gets the marked paper makes another choice among his family members. The one who picks the marked paper is thrown stones by the townspeople. Whoever wins the lottery gets stones. This is a strange story of strange conventions.

 

              Recurrence occurs frequently in the story. Old Man Warner says “Pack of crazy fools” (line32) and he repeats “ Pack of young fools”(line34). The second expression reoccurs as repetition and is more explanatory. In other words of Old Man Warner he says: “Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery.”(40) And the crowd of people repeat “Seventy-seventh time”(42). This is also an example of use of intonation, for the crowd’s way of saying this expression adds amazement into the meaning whereas this is not stated actually. This repetition is also a partial recurrence and example of paraphrasing.

 

       “She watched while Mr. Graves came around from the side of the box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely, and selected a slip of paper from the box”(27). This sentence is the example of use of ellipsis which is a cohesive devise contributing into the compactness and efficiency.

 

        The use of questions, which are not questions structurally, is another distinctive feature of the text. This aspect is parallelism.

These questions: “Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?”(4),

“Anybody ain’t here?”(10),

“Watson boy drawing this year?”(15),“

Old Man Warner make it?”(17),

”Everything clear?”(19),

“Right?”(53), “How many kids, Bill?”(55),

“Ready, Bill?”(62) are examples of use of intonation.

Because of their way of pronunciation they become questions.

 

      The most frequently used tense is “Simple Past Tense”. This contributes into the intention of the author of the telling the story as the participant of the lottery. However, the dialogues constitute of “Present Simple Tense” which makes the presence of the author in the context more obvious.

   

     The pro-forms are widely used.

“A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand”. “Here” he said (16). “… Good fellow Jack.” This is an example of cataphora.

“A tall boy “ is mentioned and then his name is given.

 Anaphora’s example is “Clyde Dunbar” he said. That’s right. He broke his leg, hasn’t he? Who’s drawing for him? (12)

 

    Coherence is the continuity of senses in a text. It deals with the underlying text. It is the harmony of concepts. As in the example “The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer………and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands.” All of these concepts are in unity when we consider the notion of school.

 

    To reach coherence we use some keys. One of them is decomposition. The concept “man” has many components whereas while the context is “man” in the village the components contextually can be limited. “Soon the man began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes.

 

     Spreading activation is another device that helps reaching the coherence. The title itself actually activates the conceptual and background information of readers. “The Lottery” is bound up to “gathering”(1), “box”(5), “slip of papers”(6), “people”(1).

 

     Coherence is also reached by using the global patterns such as “tradition”(5), as an example of “schema” and “frame”. These terms clarify the meaning and lead the reader to expect a certain order of things to happen. The manner of use of words exemplifies the views of the author as well. Conducting the lottery Mr. Summers gains a certain plan for his actions of ordering, setting the rules for participants, and script for his words throughout the text as he greets the folks in a certain way, announces the names and the winner. 

   

      Inheritance of the concepts into conclusion and prediction possibility is actually very much violated and amazing in this story. The setting, the lottery, selection give no clue about the extraordinary ending. All of the concepts are predicting a happy end whereas it ends up with a punishment and dedication to the society despite its hurting. People throw stones at the winner (79).

 

      The primary concepts which keep the meaning united are the

objects: black box, piles of stones, slip of paper;

situations: gathering, town;

events: selection, throwing stones;

actions: late coming of Tessie, Dickies guarding his great pile of stones.

And the secondary concepts are state: chatting of townspeople when they gather;

agent: Old man Warner, Tessie, Mr. Summers;

affected entity: the children throwing stones;

relation: Bill Hutchinson, Tessie and their children selecting for the second time;

attribute: Tessie’s contradiction to the lottery ”It wasn’t fair”(51) and Old man Warner’s rejecting the idea of quitting the tradition of lottery “There’s always been a lottery”(53);

location: the square where the lottery takes place;

time: does not change;

motion: children ducking beneath their families;

specification: Mr. Summers’ announcements of names, “Let’s finish quickly”(73)

 

       The intentionality is all related with the text producer. The use of the positive sentences as questions leads us think that the intention of the author is to be as simple as possible and reach a natural language use just like ordinary people do. Shirley Jackson makes a very extraordinary conclusion despite she doesn’t violate the maxims of Grice. 

 

    Actually she gives all the possible clues for the end. But our world knowledge prevents us from predicting it.

 The maxim of quantity is perfectly used as a means to the goal. “Soon the men began to gather…”(3), ”There’s always been a lottery.”(32), “It wasn’t fair.” (45), “ Be a good sport, Tessie”(46), “Shut up, Tessie.”(47).

The use of the speech is quite plainly served; there’s no violation of the maxim of manner.

”Take just one paper.”(63), “Nancy next”(64). Moreover all the information is relevant to the topic “The Lottery”.

Some speech patterns can be examined as actions. “Come on, Come on, everyone”(78): a prepositional act, as it proposes an action.

“All right, folks”(73): an utterance act, also a moving frame.

“Shut up, Tessie.”(47): an illocutionary act. “Daughters draw with their husband’s families, Tessie. (50) …

You know that as well as anyone else.”(50): perlocutionary act, for Tessie’s action is overthrown, as she is convinced.

 

     As a means to the end monitoring of the situation can help the readers to achieve a correct and expected end. By words of Tessie readers can actually guess the end. Tessie who knows what happens in the end speaks quite meaningfully actually. It is confusing why she objects to the selection of her husband Bill.

”You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair”(47).

“There’s Don and Eva, make them take their chance!”(49),

“I think we ought to start over.”(59), “Listen everybody.”(61),

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.”(79). All of her words lead us step by step to the unexpected end.

 

     In terms of acceptability I should say that the use of positive sentences as questions do not break the meaning. What is more they help in reaching an authentic language use. All of the sentences are grammatical and intended.

 

     In terms of informativity there are examples of downgrading and upgrading. There are examples of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order informativity. 1st order informativity example are “The people of the village began to gather in the square between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock”(1),”The children assembled first”(3). These examples are quite clear and explanatory. The words, which are content based, are easy to understand and follow. They give the necessary information for the attaining the context. They prepare the reader to make up the setting of the story.

   

    If we examine the exchange below we can see an example of 2nd order informativity.

 “There’s Don and Eva,” Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. “Make them take their chance!” The 1st sentence is 1st order informative, for it is in harmony with the rest of the text, but to make it more interesting the 2nd sentence is upgraded into 2nd order informativity, and explains the mentioning of “Don and Eva”.

 

    When the whole short story is considered the last sentence happens to be 3rd order informative sentence as it requires more attention, is infrequent as opposed the whole, and more interesting. “… and then they were upon her.”(79). Another example is “ A stone hit her on the side of her head.”(77)

 

   “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her.” This sentence is an example of discrepancy, for this sentence doesn’t match with the stored knowledge that was that Tessie won the lottery and all the people were on the square.

 

      Situationality is the most crucial factor that contributes to the end of the story. Monitoring of the situation happens in some of the moments in the story. For example when Tessie says ”It wasn’t fair” the different monitoring of her husband Bill “Shut up, Tessie” and that of Mrs. Delacroix “ Be a good sport, Tessie” show us how differently do people interpret the meaning even in the same situation.

Mr. Summers duty of conducting the lottery shows how he manages the situation. He even ignores Tessie’s words and continues his duty “Well everyone, that was done pretty fast and now we’ve got to be hurrying (48)” Tessie was saying “Listen everybody”(61), but Mr. Summers asked “Ready, Bill?” as if he doesn’t hear Tessie.

 

      Intertextuality is actually used as readers background knowledge of the world. A direct citation is not performed. In all the cultures there are notions of lottery, winning and gathering. Cultural intertextuality is used, violating the notions an extraordinary ending is achieved. People don’t win punishment and lotteries don’t hurt them, whereas in our short story the crowd throws stones to the winner, Tessie.    

By Tuncer Can

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