Using Semantic Waves to Decolonize Literature Studies

One of the big questions in the teaching of literature surrounds what is considered part of the canon, and what is excluded, or put more simply, what literature should we be teaching in our schools? In South Africa, as in many places, this question is politically charged. Amidst calls to decolonize education, questions around what literary works to include or to exclude are crucial. English teachers often tread a fine line between works considered “universal”, Shakespeare and the like, and the work of local writers, included for “political correctness” or because the chosen writers correspond to canonical notions of what deserves inclusion. Now I am not going to argue that English teachers should immediately renounce Shakespeare or “the greats” in the name of decolonizing the English curriculum. This smacks of impoverishing students and robbing them of access to powerful ideas and sensibilities. But clearly teachers need some clear criteria for assessing what should constitute inclusion.

It occurs to me that Semantic Waving might help explain why some poems, for example, are considered canonical and others are not, and provide a set of criteria by which works can be assessed without having to ask whether the work merely mirrors the sensibilities of canonical works, or can stand alone despite not playing by the established rules.

Semantic Waves follow from the work of Karl Maton (2013, 2014), whose Legitimation Code Theory looks essentially at how knowledge in different fields is legitimated. What makes for legitimate knowledge in Science, say, or in Music? What are the rules of the game? Three dimensions have been developed within LCT research.

• Specialisation – the degree to which the knowledge itself, or the knower and the knowing is foregrounded within a field. In some fields, like Science it does not matter who you are, what matters is what you know, the knowledge is all. In English literary studies, by contrast, having the right gaze, knowing how to approach literature is far more important than what you know. Being the right kind of knower is what really counts.
• Semantics – the degree to which meaning is condensed [complex vs simple] or contextualised [abstract vs concrete]. Bridging the gap between academic theory and prosaic, everyday knowledge lies at the heart of education. Students need to understand abstract, complex ideas in terms they can understand, and teachers mediate difficult material for their students using metaphors and everyday examples. Students then need to re-frame their understandings in more academic language.
• Autonomy – the degree to which knowledge stands alone, knowledge for knowledge sake, or is hitched to other wagons, for example the world of work. Building knowledge depends so much upon being able to transfer knowledge and skills across contexts and fields. For example Maths knowledge needs to be applied in a Science class, skills learned in English class about how to write and communicate effectively have applications in History or Business Studies classes. Should what is taught flow from the internal logic of a field or be driven by the needs of the workplace?

Semantic Waves are used to show how Semantic Gravity (SG) and Semantic Density (SD) changes over time, in the course of a lesson or a piece of writing. Semantic Gravity is described as weak (SG-) when ideas are abstract, divorced from particular contexts and strong (SG+) when it is concrete and strongly context-bound. Semantic density is described as strong (SD+) when ideas are complex and theoretical and weak (SD-) when ideas are simple.

For example, if you look at the figure below, line A describes a high semantic flatline. The discourse remains at an abstract (SG-) and complex, theoretical (SD+) level. For students there is little to help make the material being taught accessible. Line B, by contrast describes a low semantic flatline. Ideas are simple (SD-) and prosaic (SG+). Students are not teasing out themes and principles, practice is not being linked to theory. Line C describes a more marked movement up and down the semantic range.Theory and practice are linked.  Research in different fields (Matruglio, Maton, & Martin, 2013) strongly suggests that good educational practice, effective lessons, high achieving essays, have semantic profiles  with  larger semantic ranges and in which there is continual movement between abstract and complex and concrete and simple over time.

By looking at the semantic profile of a lesson or a student essay, for example, we can tell a great deal about how effective it is. Effective writing does not depend on narrative alone, but is able to draw out themes or ideas and link them across paragraphs. Ideas are introduced and developed, fleshed out with examples, with anecdote and metaphors, with data or facts and those ideas are developed by being linked to other ideas. Effective writing involves the creation of semantic waves.

It seems to me that the semantic profiles of literary works can tell us a great deal about their place in the canonical hierarchy. I have chosen to look at poetry, because it is shorter and perhaps easier to analyse quickly. In order to code the relative semantic gravity and density of a piece of writing, I have used the following device. At the level of strongest semantic gravity and lowest semantic density is those parts of a text in which meaning is literal. Everyday words are used with their everyday meanings. Moving up the spectrum as gravity weakens and density strengthens we find parts of the text where figurative language is used. Figures of speech are used, words are used more ambiguously to condense more meaning. Moving up the scale again, poems often reveal themes and ideas. The imagery and figurative use of language reveals understandings about whatever it is that the poet is writing about. We start to talk about what the poet means. The highest level of abstraction and condensation of meaning reflects a level sitting above the apparent meaning of the poem, its thematic concerns, in which the poet expresses ideas about the nature of poetry itself. This metapoetic level is often missed by those who do not have the gaze (the knower code) that predisposes them to look out for it.

 

The Obviously Canonical

Let us start by looking at a poem that is firmly part of the canon, a major poem by a major poet, probably taught to every student ever at some stage of their career anywhere in the world where English is taught.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

In this poem we see rapid movements between the strong semantic gravity of descriptions of the literal mistress’ attributes, her eyes, her lips, her breasts, hair and so on and the relatively weaker gravity of an idealised mistress typical of the Petrarchan convention. It becomes apparent that Shakespeare is critiquing the hyperbole of the Petrarchan convention, he is critiquing a trope. Each idealised hyperbole is contrasted with a real mistress, warts and all. In terms of a semantic profile, real human qualities (SG+SD-) are being contrasted with an idealised convention (SG-SD+). At the level of thematics, perhaps Shakespeare is satirising false comparison, inflated hyperbole. But the poem is firmly metapoetic. This is not actually a literal mistress being described, it is Shakespeare’s muse. Shakespeare is effectively making a claim that his poetry will not rest on the inflated hyperbole of the Petrarchan convention, but on expressing real emotions, real feelings.

The semantic profile therefore reflects both a full semantic range encompassing literal meanings, figurative language, thematic treatments and a metapoetic level for those with the cultivated gaze to see it.

It seems to me that the fullness and frequency of the waving helps explain why this particular poem’s place in the canon is uncontested. It has a face validity, I believe, to suggest that because the poem works at all levels of the semantic spectrum, it deserves its place.

But does this hold for poems clearly not destined for a place in the canon, or poems whose place is more contested? Only an extensive analysis of many many works could probably establish this, but, trying not to cherry-pick, here are two further examples.

The Obviously Non-Canonical

A Love Song​
​
Let me sing you a love song​
About what I feel in my heart;​
Butterflies can’t find nectar​
Whenever we’re apart.​
​
You’re a flower in bloom.​
In the dark, in the gloom,​
It’s you who brightens my day.​
How many ways do I need you?​
Every day, every way, come what may.

This poem by contrast operates almost entirely at a literal level, with some forays into figurative language, deploying metaphors in a somewhat random way. I could not really discern a theme being drawn beyond an expression of love. The poem certainly does not address the nature of love beyond that it is a feeling and that the poet has it.

That the poem remains at a quite concrete, simple level, does not draw out any theme, and has nothing discernible to say about the nature of poetry itself helps, I believe, to explain its obscurity.

This seems to confirm that canonical status might depend on the amplitude and frequency of the semantic profile. Poetry which works only at a literal level and deploys figurative language without advancing more nuanced or abstract meaning is not likely to be admitted to the canon.

The  Contested Canon?

But what of poetry that is more contested? The following poem is charming and engaging and was a hot favourite in 1934, but does not regularly appear in student anthologies.

This Is Just To Say

by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

In this poem the words appear simple and concrete. A man is apologizing for eating the plums his wife was saving for breakfast. Beyond the engaging enjambement and alliterative use of the “s” sound suggesting a sensuality in the eating, there is no clear theme to draw out. Perhaps the plums are not meant to be taken literally, perhaps they are forbidden fruit and the poet is apologizing for some infidelity. The poem has a gentle tone and speaks to marital intimacy and conflict, perhaps, but if so it is alluded to thinly. The poem appears to remain at a fairly literal level.

And yet if one considers the form of the poem, a fridge note, one could argue that what William Carlos Williams is “just saying” is that ordinary realia, ordinary life, can be elevated to the status of poetry and is a fit subject for Art. This is a decidedly metapoetic twist to what appears a simple poem, and if read that way, might be enough to elevate the poem into the canonical pantheon.

The  Decolonized Canon?

I have argued so far that full semantic profiles appear to be present in works considered for the canon, and absent in those that do not belong. The only way to test this hypothesis would be to analyse large numbers of poems from school anthologies, but I am going to assume for the moment that my argument holds, and will turn to consider a few poems that might not share the same concerns as poets in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, but might be more comfortably identified as fitting a decolonized canon. Does semantic waving appear to work in the same way?

I have chosen two poems by South African poet Don Mattera, whose protest poetry is often included in anthologies of Anti-Apartheid poetry. His work clearly belongs within the canon of protest poetry, but does it share features in common with Shakespeare and Carlos Williams?

I feel a poem

Thumping deep, deep
I feel a poem inside
wriggling within the membrane
of my soul;
tiny fists beating,
beating against my being
trying to break the navel cord,
crying, crying out
to be born on paper

Thumping
deep, so deeply
I feel a poem,
inside

In this poem the metapoetic is foregrounded. A poem being created is compared to the birth of a baby. The literal descriptions of a fetus struggling to be born is compared to the pangs of creative birth in writing poetry. But something else is going on at a thematic level. The poem is not a literal poem only, the poem being born is the poem of a people yearning for freedom. The poet is feeling the stirrings of the national revolution. The semantic profile would be very similar to the Shakespearean sonnet we started with. This is a poem I think most English teachers would be very comfortable including because it fits so well with the Anglo-Saxon canonical model in which metapoetry is the highest pursuit of the poet.

The second poem, however, sits somewhat differently.

Sobukwe

On his death

It was our suffering
and our tears
that nourished and kept him alive
their law that killed him

Let no dirges be sung
no shrines be raised
to burden his memory
sages such as he
need no tombstones
to speak their fame

Lay him down on a high mountain
that he may look
on the land he loved
the nation for which he died

Men feared the fire of his soul

The sensibilities are somewhat different. The poem takes the form of an epitaph and contrasts strongly a reputation that was nourished by the suffering of the popular struggle and extinguished by Apartheid law. The meaning remains at a fairly literal level. At a thematic level the meaning is fairly literal as well. Clear sides are drawn between “our” suffering and “their” laws, but this is not explored. The poem is clearly meant to stand by itself. Its meaning does not need to be elaborated, this is a paean to a dead hero. In its simplicity it has a power and is deeply moving. The final line asserts a power beyond the grave, suggesting a flame not extinguished, and a call to solidarity of “us” versus “them”.

And yet the simple addition of the words “on his death” as a prelude to the poem itself suggests that the poem needs to be read as a formal statement, the poem itself will be the shrine to Sobukwe’s memory. Literal shrines would “burden” his memory. Just as with the William Carlos William poem, on reflection as you mull over the poem, its metapoetic impact reveals itself slowly.

 

Conclusion

Five poems alone cannot really warrant a conclusion, but I would argue that these quick glosses do indicate that semantic waves are a useful tool for analysing poetry and that it seems as if powerful poetry depends upon a broad semantic range, and that this is not a culturally bound observation. Teachers choosing works for inclusion in the decolonized curriculum need not fear that the inclusion of local poetry weakens the importance of the canon, but care needs to be taken to include work which is thematically and metapoetically broad.

Bibliography

Maton, Karl. 2013. “Making Semantic Waves: A Key to Cumulative Knowledge-Building.” Linguistics and Education 24 (1): 8–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2012.11.005.

Matruglio, Erika, Karl Maton, and J.R. R. Martin. 2013. “Time Travel: The Role of Temporality in Enabling Semantic Waves in Secondary School Teaching.” Linguistics and Education 24 (1): 38–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2012.11.007.

Maton, Karl, 2014, Knoweldge and Knowers; Towards a realist sociology of education, Routledge.