Toward a Visual Stylistics: Assent and Denial in Chaucer

Abstract

In this essay I describe a distribution among various expressions meaning "yes" and "no" in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. Although it is true that the distinctions receive phonological as well as graphic expression, it is nevertheless my argument that the systemic character of the contrasts belongs fundamentally and essentially to visible rather than to audible language. I demonstrate this by showing that variations in the spelling of these expressions, distinguishing no from nay and yes from yea, are quite explicably systematic in the highly literate poetry of Chaucer, but in free variation in records preserving the oral traditions of alliterative verse. The implication of this research which I believe will most interest students of writing is this: if it is true that these contrasts — which are expressed both in writing and speech — are systemic only in writing, then the visible form of expression must be afforded the status of language in every significant sense of that term as used in modern linguistics. In this research we have, in other words, further evidence that writing and speech are not simply alternative modes of expressing language, but rather that each is quite fully and integrally a language in its own right.