External Deviation

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External deviation is a kind of foregrounding where the text producer breaks conventions or ‘rules’ that people accept for the type of text they’re writing. They do this to draw attention to specific parts of their writing.

As text receivers, we tend to pay attention to language when it is different from what we expect to find there. We make predictions about what we think we should see in the text based on things like:

• Text type (mode and genre)
• Implied reader (who the text was written for)
• Activity types
• Social rules and customs (like politeness)
• Time period
• Geographical location
• Dialect
• Text purpose
• Medium
• Details about the text producer
• Context
• Other texts that this text was influenced by (intertextuality)
• How much time we expect the writer to dedicate to a topic.

These assumptions about what a text should be like are called ‘conventions’. We draw conclusions about these conventions based on what we’ve learnt from other texts similar to this one.

When a text goes against these conventions, it draws our attention. We wonder why the writer wanted it to be different from our expectations, so we spend more time thinking about it. That’s what we call ‘external deviation’.

This happens because our brains evolved to notice when things are different. Think about how your brain can tune out background noise. However, as soon as the noise changes to something different or stops, our ears prick up.

The same is true of language. We don’t tend to notice the things that we expect to be there. We mainly notice the things that are different, unusual or out of place.

Another related type of foregrounding is internal deviation. It’s when the text producer sets their own rules and expectations in their writing and then breaks them.

Why is it called ‘external deviation’?

We call it ‘external deviation’ because the text producer didn’t make up the rules that we expect them to follow. The rules and conventions were externally placed on them by society. In many cases, the rules and conventions existed way before the text producer was born.

It’s a bit like a colouring book, really. The writer has decided to colour in the picture called ‘novel’. They can choose to make it any colour they want, and it’s going to look unique to some extent. However, the original lines were there way before they even opened the book.

If they ignore those lines at any point and draw outside of them, we’re going to notice it. We know what the ‘novel’ picture looked like, so we know that this looks different from what we expected

On the other hand, with internal deviation, the writer is drawing lines from scratch. The page was blank before they started their work, so they drew some of their own lines to follow. Then, they chose not to follow all of the lines they made. They set out their own rules and then broke them.

With a real text, there will be a combination of internal and external deviation. It’s more like the writer traced a bunch of other drawings with tracing paper and then chose to add their own elements.

What counts as external deviation?

There are plenty of things that count as external deviation.

That’s because many different things impact how we understand and interpret the language we hear! We don’t just rely on the words we hear to get meaning. We use lots of other cues, like how someone said something, when they used the language, the structure of their language, and many other things.

Below, I have included a list of categories that have rules or conventions associated with them. If you break any of those conventions, you are foregrounding through external deviation.

Usually, when we talk about deviation, we’re talking about linguistic analysis. So, it’s all the ways that the text doesn’t match how we usually use language. However, I will mention some other things you need to be aware of – and also some closely-related terms for literary conventions.

Of course, I haven’t included a full, detailed list of all the conventions. There are way too many different types under each category for me to do that! If there’s a particular thing that you want more information about, you’ll have to do some research. Or, you can ask me in the comments! I always love the engagement, so I’ll try my best to answer.

This isn’t a definitive list. There are probably a bunch of things I’ve missed out! If you think of a category I haven’t included already, please let me know in the comments, and I’ll update this page as soon as I can.

The microlinguistic levels

When you start to learn about linguistics for the first time, you might hear about the microlinguistic levels. These are the major parts of language that help us to make meaning when we talk to each other.

People disagree on how many they are, and how to classify them. Some people (including me) will talk about phonetics and phonology together. Others will also include other parts of language in there, such as the way we write. I’ll talk about that later.

However, overall, people all agree that the six levels in the picture below all play a part in how we make meaning and communicate with each other.

Even though linguists talk about and classify these levels separately, it’s important for you to know that you can’t really have one without the other. They are all interconnected, so meaning is built by how they interact. For example, the order of words in a sentence won’t tell you a whole lot about the meaning if you don’t know what those words are.

You can analyse any of them in your exams. All of them will give you interesting things to say! However, don’t feel pressured to speak about all of them in one essay.

Personally, I find it the easiest to talk about syntax and pragmatics. I could speak about those two for hours! And I could definitely write an A* essay on just those two things. There’s so much to say!

In fact, if you choose to do an MA or PhD in English, you might end up spending 15,000 words or more talking about just one small aspect of one of these levels – like a whole essay on the pronoun ‘you’!

Phonology and phonetics

Phonology and phonetics refer to the sounds of a language. So, when we talk about part of a text being externally deviant in terms of phonology or phonetics, we’re saying that the sounds of that part of te text aren’t what we would expect.

This could happen in many different ways. The speaker could pronounce a word unusually or unexpectedly, put extra stress on a particular sound, or do plenty of other things!

For example, if Benedict Cumberbatch meant to pronounce the word ‘penguins’ so strangely in his documentary, we could say his phonology was externally deviant.

There’s also the example of Kaa from the original Disney animated Jungle Book.

Since he is a snake, he pronounces words with an extra emphasis on the /s/ sound. He drags out the sound as much as possible to sound serpent-like. Plus, he takes the ‘sh’ sound in ‘delicious’ and turns it into an /s/ sound, too!

It’s external deviation because that’s not the typical way we’d expect someone with a British or American accent to pronounce those words. So, it creates the effect of making him sound like a snake!

Of course, in a written text, you’ll need to spell words differently if you want to show that there has been a phonological deviation like this. Spelling words differently is a different type of external deviation, though. It’s called ‘graphology’. I explain the relationship between sounds and graphology in the dedicated section below.

Morphology

Morphology is all about the different small parts that make up words. So, we’re talking about roots, prefixes, suffixes and other small units of language that come together.

When a writer externally deviates in the level of morphology, they’re using these small parts of words to create a new one. For example, they could add an ending to a noun to turn it into a verb. Or, they could add a prefix like ‘un’, ‘meta’ or ‘mis’ to the start of a word to make a new word.

Sometimes, it might be difficult to find an example of a writer externally deviating in the level of morphology. We’re so used to creating new words from different roots, prefixes and suffixes that when we do, it doesn’t stay externally deviant for very long. Other people pick up the new words and start to use them in their own writing. Then, it gets added to the dictionary as a new word in its own right.

For example, the word ‘unputdownable’ would have been externally deviant the first time it was used. It uses lots of smaller components of words: the prefix ‘un’, two roots ‘put’ and ‘down’, and the suffix ‘able’ to create something new. However, it’s been used so many times now that it’s common in book reviews. That means it’s not externally deviant anymore!

This kind of deviation can become a new word so quickly that I actually struggled to find an example for you. So, I’ll use the example Dan McIntyre gave in his FutureLearn Course:

Gherkin or Gherkout

I found this example super useful because it treats the end of the word ‘gherkin’ as if it were a suffix. That way, it playfully creates the new word ‘gherkout’ and alludes to the fixed expression, ‘in or out’.

Syntax

Syntax is all about the order of words – how words work together to form phrases, clauses and sentences.

So, if you want to deviate externally in syntax, you need to put the words into an order that we wouldn’t usually expect to see them based on the rules and conventions of English grammar. You could do this by not using a verb in a sentence, swapping the order in an unexpected way, or plenty of other methods!

One of the most famous examples of external deviation on the syntax level comes from Star Wars.

Yoda often puts the word in his sentence in an unusual order. He doesn’t always speak like this! But when he does, he orders his sentences by Object-Subject-Verb.

So, rather than saying ‘You still have much to learn’, Yoda says ‘Much to learn, you still have’. It makes him sound different to everyone else – as if he is from a whole different world. In fact, it can often give him a mystical, philosophical quality to his words.

This syntax is actually really rare even in other languages! So it shows just how unique he really is.

Semantics

The language level of semantics is all about the literal meanings of words. In other words, it’s about what you’ll find in a dictionary when you look up the word.

External deviation in the level of semantics is when you use a word in a way that is surprising based on its usual meaning. It creates a sense of ambiguity and makes us wonder what the text producer is actually talking about.

This happens a lot with devices like personification. When you take an inanimate object and describe it in a way you’d usually describe a human, it can cause semantic external deviation.

I like the example from Dan McIntyre’s FutureLearn course:

124 was spiteful

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Usually, we don’t associate a number with emotions and intentions. So, by describing it in this way it makes us wonder just what or who 124 is.

You might also see it when someone uses an unexpected adjective to describe something. For example, if you were to say, ‘This drink tastes angry’, it would make the text receiver pause and question, what does it mean for something to taste angry?

That’s why semantic deviation is often related to metaphors and the stylistic device known as depersonalisation. The ambiguity brings about whole different meanings.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is probably my favourite part of linguistics. It’s all about how the meaning of words are impacted by when and where you say them.

So, external deviation on the level of pragmatics is all about when someone says something you wouldn’t expect in that kind of context.

This happens in many different ways. For example, replying to someone’s question or statement with a piece of information that seems off-topic or irrelevant externally deviates on this level. The same is true for when the speaker is using a type of language which doesn’t really fit the kind of conversation (activity type) that is happening.

Flouting one of Grice’s Maxims is probably the most common example of pragmatic external deviation.

For example, if someone said they’ve had a terrible day and you reply, ‘It’s Tuesday’, that is externally deviant. It seems like it isn’t related to what the other speaker (your interlocutor) said! So, it makes them wonder, ‘How is the day of the week related to what I just said?’

That makes them generate an implicature. In other words, they analyse the words and come up with a relationship between the two statements on their own: are you saying that all Tuesdays are bad?

There are lots of different examples of pragmatics. For example, putting two sentences together that seem to have no relationship makes us come up with one for ourselves: ‘She hasn’t been able to find her pet chicken since last week. I ate some lovely chicken nuggets for dinner on Monday’.

Politeness also falls into pragmatics. For instance, we expext people to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when they ask or something. Those are our cultural rules. When they don’t do that, it creates external deviation that we can analyse.

Graphology

Graphology is all about how texts look on the page. So, we can only analyse it in written texts.

A graphological external deviation happens when the words on the page look different from how we expet them to . This could be because of:

• Spelling (orthography)
• Italics
• Bold
• Capitalisation
• Punctuation
• Line breaks
• The ‘shape’ of the text

As Mick Short points out in Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, you can’t really separate phonological external deviation from graphological external deviation in written texts. After all, when you’re writing a text, you don’t hear the words on the page. You see them, which then helps you to make assumptions about how they’re pronounced. So, the graphology informs the phonology.

That means, if you want to make your reader pronounce a word in an unusual way, you’ll have to make it visually different from what we expect. Graphology is the written-text equivalent of phonology and phonetics.

That’s why a small minority of linguists include graphology as one of the microlinguistic levels. But that isn’t very common at all. Most linguistics don’t include it as part of the original six. Instead, they include it as a separate stylistic thing to analyse. So, I decided I wouldn’t either. That way, you don’t get confused if you go looking at other sources.

What are some other, related areas?

Tone and register

Your tone refers to how you say something and is closely linked to your emotions. So, you could have a bitter, playful or sarcastic tone. On the other hand, your register is about how formal or informal your language is, plus what kind of language it is. So, you could have a formal academic register, for instance.

These two terms fall under the umbrella of pragmatics. That’s because the tone and register you use for a text depends on the context of what kind of text it is. The thing that matters is how appropriate your way of speaking is for a specific circumstance. Part of pragmatics is about activity types, and there are definitely certain tones and registers that match certain activity types!

For example, it would be weird if you started a text message to your best friend with, ‘I hope you are well’. The register would be way too formal and distant! But if you walked into a job interview and gave the interviewer a casual ‘sup?’, you probably wouldn’t be giving them a very good impression of you.

So, if the tone or register doesn’t match the context of the conversation, we could say that the writer is externally deviating from expected forms of conversation.

This kind of external deviation is obvious in the dialogue of characters like Eggsy in the Kingsman series and Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion (which became the musical known as My Fair Lady). They both speak in an informal register that doesn’t quite fit the posh, upper-class setting. We would expect them to code switch to fit the environment, but they don’t!

However, there is also accident discrimination happening here, too. It’s not just their register that makes them stand out. It’s also the fact that they have working-class accents.

Form and medium

The form of a text refers to what kind of text it is. Some examples include letters, poems, text messages, newspaper articles and speeches. On the other hand, the medium is about where it’s been published or delivered. So, it could be on a website, via your phone, on Twitter, etc.

The form or medium of the text shares a lot in common with the activity types I mentioned in the pragmatics section. They’re all about how people have expectations about how a text should be based on what kind of text it is.

However, we think about form and medium more with written texts, while it’s much more common to analyse activity types when there’s dialogue happening.

Think about what you expect a written letter to look like. Compare it to the way you’d expect people to write in a text message or TikTok comments section. They’re not the same, right? Well, that’s because the form and medium are different. So, there are different conventions and expectations we have about how to write in a way that ‘fits in’.

I know for one that if I started texting my friends with really formal syntax and vocabulary, they would probably think I’d been kidnapped or replaced by a robot or something. My husband might think I’m being mad at him. Writing in a formal way in TikTok comments might make me sound 20 years older than I am!

That’s because all of these things externally deviate from the expectations of their form and medium.

Style guide

Even when

Accent, dialect and sociolect

Literary conventions

You can find something quite similar to external deviation happening for literary conventions!

This happens when the way the writer is writing doesn’t fit the literary conventions we expect it to based on:

• Text type/genre
• Literary genre
• Literary movement
• Literary period
• Themes and symbols

This could happen if a writer chose to put line breaks into a novel or write a horror story in the style of a comedy, for example. Plus, imagine if a text producer who is part of the Romanticism movement started praising the factories that cause nature to be cut down and people to lose their jobs! It would definitely go against what we would expect to see.

Unless you’ve never read that kind of text before, you’re going to have expectations of how it will be written. These expectations will be based on your schema of other texts in that type, genre, movement, period, etc. Some academics call this kind of schema ‘literary competence’.

When the writer doesn’t meet these expectations, it’s going to draw our attention. We’ll focus on that way more than the things that do match what we assume we’ll see. That makes us start to wonder what the writer was trying to say or do by breaking away like that.

However, both linguists and literary theorists don’t tend to refer to that as ‘external deviation’ – at least as far as I’ve seen! Instead, they refer to it as a subversion of conventions.

There are definitely similarities between the two, though! In fact, they kinda go hand in hand. Most of the time, if you want to subvert conventions, you have to use external deviation.

Delivery and performance choices

Why is it So Useful to Understand External Deviation?

How Can You Notice External Deviation in Texts?

Do Writers Actually Notice That They’ve Done External Deviation?

My post on the curtains being blue for a reason

How Understanding External Deviation Makes You a Better Writer

How to Talk About External Deviation in Your Essays

Where Can You Learn More?

• A/AS Level English Language and Literature for AQA Student Book – Marcello Giovanelli, Andrea Macrae, Felicity Titjen and Ian Cushing
• The FutureLearn Stylistics Course by Dan McIntyre, Lesley Jeffries and Louise Nuttall at Huddersfield University (This one is no longer available)
• Using Foregrounding Theory as a Teaching Methodology in a Stylistics Course – Dan McIntyre
• Style in Fiction – Geoffrey Leech and Mick Short
• Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose – Mick Short
• The Esthetics of Language – Jan Mukarovsky
• The Linguistic Levels of Foregrounding in Stylistics – Christiana Gregoriou
• Teaching English Language and Literature 16-19 – NATE
• Explorations in the Function of Language – M.A.K. Halliday
• How to Analyse Texts – Ronald Carter and Angela Goddard
• The Language of Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics – Marcello Giovanelli and Jessica Mason
• The Babel Lexicon of Language – Dan McIntyre, Lesley Jeffries, Matt Evans, Hazel Price and Erica Gold
• Ways of Reading: Advanced Reading Skills for Students of English Literature – Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Tom Furniss and Sara Mills

Please note: some of the links above are Amazon Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

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