Syntax is one of the six micro-linguistic levels you study in English language. It is about how we order words to make phrases, clauses and sentences.
That means you’re thinking about why a text producer chose a specific word order and how that helps to add to their message and purpose.
When you study syntax, you use terms such as:
- Active voice
- Passive voice
- Transitive construction
- Intransitive construction
- Ditransitive construction
- Anastrope (like Yoda)
- Simple sentences
- Complex sentences
- Compound sentences
- Compound-complex sentences
- Main clause
- Subordinate clause
Plus, there are plenty of others. That’s a good start, though!
When we talk, it’s not just the words we use that matter. It’s also the order that we put them in. For example, the sentence “He laughed at me” is very different to “I was laughed at by him”. They both communicate the same piece of information. However, the focus and purpose of the two sentences are different. That’s why understanding syntax is so important.
The more you understand syntax, the better you are able to talk about why writers order words the way they do. What do they want to draw our attention to? What do they want us to notice first? How do they want us to imagine the scene in our heads? All of these questions play a big part in understanding writers.
Syntax is also a very important area for you to understand if you want to write better. It helps you to write clearer sentences, and also to be more intentional with how you present information. That makes you better at both academic and creative writing!
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How Writers Foreground with Syntax
As Will Storr says in The Science of Storytelling, humans have evolved to notice things that go against our expectations or change more than those that don’t.
In writing, we have three main ways that we make our words stand out:
- Breaking the rules and expectations set by society on how to write that kind of text well (external deviation).
- Setting up our writing style so that the reader gets used to it and then breaking it (internal deviation).
- Repeating things until they demand notice (parallelism).
All of these things are forms of foregrounding. You can foreground by breaking rules or repeating lots of things – including in syntax. In fact, many of the devices I listed earlier are examples of foregrounding with syntax!
For example, anastrophe is a type of external deviation. It’s when the text producer breaks rules about the order or words. Yoda’s words stand out because we notice that he doesn’t talk in the “standard” way.
The same is true for parallelism. A text producer can make their words stand out by repeating the syntactical structure. Devices like isocolon, tricolon, anaphora and epistrophe all count for this. Then, you also have chiasmus, which is about repeating the same words but in a different order.
Just like with any example of foregrounding, it’s not enough to point out that this is happening. You need to think about why the text producer would want to draw our attention to their language at that specific point. What is it about what they’re saying that means it needs to stand out?
Why is it So Important?
Thinking about syntax can be a very powerful way to improve the texts you write – both as a student of English and someone writing their own creative texts. It helps you in so many different ways!
For one, knowing what standard syntax is can help you notice when text producers are deviating from it. It makes you think about how and why they make certain parts of their language stand out. Then, you can talk about this in your own exam.
Secondly, understanding standard word order means you can write clearly. You understand how to order words to help people understand your point easily and what order can confuse people or cause them to lose along the way.
Complex syntax can be a huge problem with very smart A-level students. They write in a way that they might think makes them seem smart. In reality, they just seem pretentious with their paragraph-long sentences. People can also forget what you said at the beginning of the sentence by the time they reach the end. Studying syntax can help you to fix that issue.
Also, it helps you to foreground important things in your text when you want to. The more you know about syntax, the more you understand how to break it for a purpose. You won’t accidentally foreground things that don’t matter. You’ll also have more sophisticated, interesting ways to draw your text receiver’s attention where you want it to be.
The annoying thing is that there aren’t a lot of books or resources out there that teach you what standard syntax looks like. Even with ESL resources, they seem to focus more on verb tenses than how to order words properly. The only exception seems to be the order of adjectives in a sentence.
How to Talk About Syntax In Your Essays
It is important to note that syntax is an area of study that an academic can dedicate their whole professional lives to. So, you should treat it more like a lens of analysis that you can use to think about a text deeper.
That means it is never enough to say that the text producer “uses syntax”, “makes syntactical choices” or “chooses their syntax”. Of course, they do! We are all using syntax all the time. It’s like saying that the filmmaker uses a camera. We want to know what these choices are and how they are important.
Instead, it’s useful to consider which devices fit under the “syntax” umbrella and why the text producer might have chosen a certain syntactical structure.
Remember that humans don’t really notice things that are ordinary. We’re drawn to things that are unusual or unexpected. So, don’t spend time in your essays and exams talking about the syntax if it is what you would expect syntax to be. Instead, focus on where it stands out through foregrounding (see above).
I find that the best essays don’t start by looking for devices at all. They look for quotes that are useful and packed with things they can analyse. Then, they work out which of the micro-linguistic levels fits their analysis best.
This is because it stops them from feature spotting. They focus first on answering the question by thinking about what they know about the text overall – and what it communicates to its readers. Then, they find the quotes to back their arguments up. It’s only then that they think about what terms they could use to talk about the quotes they’ve already chosen. That’s how essays are supposed to be structured. So, it gives them a big advantage.
If you do talk about syntax, you can use foregrounding terms like “syntactical deviation” or talk about how the syntax stands out. Don’t act like it’s a device on its own – because it’s not.
Where Can You Learn More?
There are plenty of places that you can go to learn more about terminology. However, here are the ones that I used to learn about and deepen my understanding of syntax. I used many of them to help me write this glossary entry!
- UCL’s courses on grammar. I used English Grammar for Teachers. However, there is also:
- The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K Pullum, Et al.
- Edinburgh University’s ‘Short Overview of English Syntax‘
- Understanding Grammar in Scotland Today by John Corbett and Christian J. Kay
- The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar by Bas Aarts
- How to Analyse Texts – Ronald Carter and Angela Goddard
I will add more of these as I can. Interestingly, grammar (and specifically syntax) is a difficult area of English because there are so many different answers to simple questions. However, I highly recommend anything by Bas Aarts at UCL. He’s a real lifesaver on this topic!
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