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The Language of Repression: a Linguistic Approach to Ishiguro’s Style

Langage et refoulement: approche linguistique du style d’lshiguro
Linda Pillière

Résumés

Les lecteurs d’Ishiguro ont souvent remarqué les formes du détour dans la narration, la façon dont les personnages évitent de parler des sujets douloureux, mettant à distance des souvenirs pénibles ou des désirs insupportables. Réticents à parler de leur passé, ces narrateurs utilisent des techniques de détournement, révélant ainsi l’emploi de stratégies énonciatives bien spécifiques. Ce sont ces stratégies que nous nous proposons d’examiner. Notre étude porte sur le roman The Remains of the Day et commence par une analyse du lexique. Nous examinons ensuite le choix de structures grammaticales, la façon dont certaines informations sont focalisées et privilégiées et d’autres reléguées à l’arrière-plan, voire omises. Pour conclure nous nous penchons sur le rôle de la négation.

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  • 1 Allan Yorda and Kim Herzinger,An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro’, Mississippi Review 20 (1991), p. (...)
  • 2 Brian W. Shaffer, Understanding Kazuo lshiguro, Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press, 19 (...)
  • 3 Michael Billig, Freudian Repression, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 13.

1Ishiguro’s characters avoid talking about painful experiences, keeping unwelcome memories or intolerable desires at bay. They repress knowledge about their past and this avoidance of certain issues is reflected in their use of language. Ishiguro himself once said:Tm interested in the way words hide meaning. [. . .] The language I use tends to be the sort that actually suppresses meaning and tries to hide away meaning.’1 The same idea is echoed in another interview when Ishiguro states:The Remains of the Day is written in the language of self-deception.’2 This echoes the definition of repression given by Sigmund Freud according to whom there exist desires and instincts that we ostensibly reject but never completely relinquish. Michael Billig, in his work Freudian Repression, points out that ‘the idea of self­ deceit, or willed forgetting, forms the basis for the Freudian concept of repression.’3 According to Freud repression involves turning something away, and keeping it at a distance, from the conscious.

2Yet one may well wonder how can language hide meaning? What stylistic choices have been made by the author? These are some of the questions we shall try to answer in this paper, by concentrating on the novel The Remains of the Day.

  • 4 Ali references are to the Faber edition of 258 pages (reprinting of 1996). Kazuo Ishiguro, The Rema (...)
  • 5 Fowler, Roger, Linguistics and the Novel, 1977, Arrowsmith: Bristol, 1985, p. 103.
  • 6 Ibid., p. 104.

3In The Remains of the Day,4 the narrator Stevens, butler of an English country house, recounts various events from his past life at Darlington Hall while undertaking a motoring trip to the West Country in 1956. The first person narrative admirably demonstrates what Roger Fowler terms as amind-style’ in other words ‘any distinctive linguistic presentation of an individual mental self.’5 As Fowler remarks,by assigning a consistent type of semantic structure to a character, or managing some particularly significant transformations in a distinctive way, the novelist is able to convey not only the sequence of a character’s thoughts [. . .] but also the implicit structure and quality of his outlook on the world.’6 Such a style involves a variety of linguistic techniques and in this article we shall attempt to show how the choice of vocabulary, the use of particular clause-patterns and transitivity patterns ail contribute to presenting Stevens as a character who seeks to repress his deepest emotions.

Vocabulary: Distancing Oneself From the Truth

4Stevens’s use of vocabulary can perhaps best be summed up by saying that he refuses to call a spade a spade but would prefer the term ‘digging implement’. Indeed when he describes the fact that he has finished a particular job he even uses the term implement: ‘I had exhausted the tasks which could usefully be achieved with the implements I happened to have at hand’ (60).

  • 7 Cf. François Gallix, ‘À la recherche de quelques clefs interprétatives du titre The Remains of the (...)

5Stevens’s choice of words of Latin origin and preferably ones of several syllables, has been remarked upon by other critics.7 He uses ‘commence’ not ‘begin’ (71, 129),ascertain’ notknow’ (l5, 109, 168,189,216), ‘remuneration’ not ‘pay’ (217). Rather than use phrasai verbs he prefers verbs of Latin origin: ‘ascend’ (114, 203, 100) rather than ‘go up’, descend’ (63) rather than ‘go down’.

  • 8 George Orwell, The Politics ofLanguage, 1946. http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html.

6At other moments he shows a preference for verbs created from nouns such as ‘this is evidenced by the fact’ (142) ‘to depart the room’ (96),to explicate’ (103). In the words of Orwell, in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language, ‘a mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up ail the details.’8

7In similar fashion, Stevens frequently uses a verb and a noun when a simple verb would have sufficed. Instead of being a single word a verb thus becomes a phrase, the verb that is used being a general-purpose verb such as ‘take’, ‘feel’, ‘perform’ or ‘make’. Thus we find ‘take the appearance’ (188) forappear’, took his meals’ (75) for ‘he ate’ ‘felt a new resolve’ (26) for ‘resolve’, ‘made an attempt’ (49) for ‘attempt’ or ‘try’.

8Moreover, simple prepositions are avoided: ‘because’ becomes ‘this was due to the fact that’ (23),very akin to’ (29) is preferred to ‘like’, ‘prior to’ replaces ‘before’ (67),aside from’ is used instead of ‘except’ (70), and ‘in the midst of’ is a substitute both for ‘while’ (92) and ‘during’ (96).

9The overall effect is to introduce a stiltedness to his speech. Contrary to ail the precepts laid down by H.W. Fowler in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Stevens rejects the familiar word in favour of the far-fetched, the concrete word in favour of the abstract, the single in favour of circumlocution, the short in favour of the long, the Saxon in favour of the Romance. A parallel can surely be drawn here between the desire to try to improve one’s social status and to improve appearances in a more general sense. Stevens himself is constantly preoccupied with the importance of clothes and physical appearance. The use of Latinate terms could be interpreted as just another facet of this, a desire to clothe simple ideas in a more elevated fashion and, by so doing, to hide the naked truth. However it is worth noting that Lord Darlington, his master and social superior, far from resorting to such a convoluted style, often has a more direct approach than Stevens. On inquiring whether the two dismissed Jewish maids might be found, Lord Darlington says: ‘I suppose there’s no way of tracing them now’. Stevens’s rephrasing of the sentence is a masterpiece of circumlocution: ‘I am not at ail certain it will be possible to ascertain their whereabouts at this stage’ (159). It therefore seems that Stevens’s use of circumlocutions and Latinate terms is one way he uses language to avoid plain­ speaking and to obscure facts and feelings.

10Another notable feature of Stevens’s lexis is the use of nominalizations such as ‘the appearance of ominous storm clouds’ (215) instead ofstorm clouds appearing’, ‘without the participation of such a personage’ (79) rather than ‘without such a personage participating’. Or again ‘My recollection of Mr Lewis’ (89) as opposed to ‘I remember Mr Lewis’ andwith the arrivai of spring’ (93) instead ofwhen spring arrives’. These nominalizations telescope a clausal process into a noun phrase. Thus what could be presented as an action and incorporated into a chronological sequence is treated as an entity. Many different stylistic effects result from this choice. Firstly, important aspects of the process are left unspecified: tense for example (soarrivai’ can mean ‘arrived’, ‘arrives’, ‘had arrived’ etc.) and modality (any distinction betweenmay be’, will be’ and so on is lost) and often an agent and/or a goal.Since their electrification’ (102), does not tell us who carried out the process of electrifying or when. A certain ‘fuzziness’, a blurring of detail is thus achieved and, taken to its extreme, nominalization can even be incomprehensible. When Stevens announces to M. Dupont ‘Assistance is not immediately available at this precise moment’ (111) there is little wonder that M. Dupont asksWhat do you mean, butler?’ In this case, who is available or not available to help is unclear. Nominalizations by the very fact that the participants of the process are omitted can be used to conceal information. Furthermore, the experience process is attenuated. It becomes a static condition and enables the narrator to be economical with the truth, backgrounding what should in fact be foregrounded.

11At moments of intense emotion Stevens tends to hide even more behind the combination of such Latinate expressions and nominalizations. The passage just quoted concerning M. Dupont occurs when Stevens’s father has just died but throughout this section of the novel Stevens represses his guilt and feelings through this cloak of language. He describes his father’s loss of status and humiliation, his pushing a trolley as opposed to carrying trays, as ‘a way to circumvent the limitations on his effectiveness’ (81). We are not far here from the euphemisms of being politically correct and doublespeak.

12This need to hide behind abstract terms, to avoid facing up to what is too painful emotionally is also reflected in Stevens’s use of indeterminates. Thussome’ is used repeatedly for, although ‘some’ presupposes the existence of a referent, it denotes a deficit in information, either because the speaker is incapable of giving the full information or because he refuses to. It also enables Stevens to distance himself from events. Thus he describes howSomething about this small encounter’ had put him in very good spirits (72) or ‘caused (him) somehow to feel exceedingly uplifted’. When he describes a view he finds particularly impressive, it is noticeably devoid of precise adjectives: ‘What I saw was principally field upon field rolling off into the far distance. The land rose and fell gently, and the fields were bordered by hedges and trees. There were dots in some of the distant fields which I assumed to be sheep. To my right, almost on the horizon, I thought I could see the square tower of a church’ (26). The closest he can come to describing his sentiments at this point is to use the expression ‘a fine feeling’. Indeed, the verb ‘feel’ may be used throughout the novel—but Stevens never truly specifies what he feels: ‘I distinctly felt that rare, yet unmistakable feelingthe feeling that one is in the presence of greatness’ (29). Such expressions remain vague enabling Stevens to hide his true emotions.

13When he finally recounts his meeting with Miss Kenton, he cannot say outright how happy he is to see her again but introduces the fact with various hedging devices ‘That is to say, it was, on the whole’, before declaring that it was ‘extremely pleasing to see her again’ (245).

Grammatical Structures: Denial of Personal Involvement

14Although the use of lexis is perhaps the most immediately striking aspect of Stevens’s idiolect, it is the way words enter into grammatical structures, combining to portray events and actions that really reveal how far Stevens refuses to acknowledge his personal responsibility for events.

  • 9 M.A.K. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Edward Arnold, 1985.

15In An Introduction to Functional Grammar,9 Halliday underlines that transitivity is not to be reduced to a matter of syntax such as whether a verb is followed by a direct object or not. It is rather that the semantic processes and participants expressed in clauses represent how we see events in the world, our view of reality. A process can be said to consist, potentially at least, of three components: the process itself; the participants in the process: who does what to whom; the circumstances associated with the process. Ali three components, their presence or their absence, play an important role in influencing how we construe events. With regard to the process itself, it is possible to distinguish between various types of process: material processes aredoing’ processes in the ordinary sense of the word, mental processes are those concerned with sense and feeling, behavioural processes concern processes such assmile’, laugh,’ whilesay’, tell’, are verbal processes, and relational processes, which relate some attribute or identity to a being, include verbs such as ‘seem’, ‘be’, appear’.

16If we study firstly the types of processes used, and the different participant roles in The Remains of the Day, it becomes obvious that when a material process occurs, the actor is rarely Stevens, unlike his American employer, who, from the outset, is portrayed as being a dynamic instigator of events, subject of material processes and affecting his surroundings: ‘My employer put his volumes down, seated himself and stretched out his legs’ (3). Stevens, on the other hand, is invariably the patient, the one who is acted upon by others or the recipient of feelings as in ‘A tranquil mood had come over me’ (71), and this is underlined by the use of the passive as in verbal processes: ‘on turning at the landing (I) was met by a strange sight’ (97) instead of the active voice: ‘I saw a strange sight’. A connection can be made here between the absence of Stevens as agent of a material process and the use of nominalization mentioned earlier. Both undoubtedly mirror his subservient role: someone who obeys orders but does not instigate action, but they also underline his refusal to accept responsibility for his actions, his need to repress his own role in events.

17On other occasions, Stevens is agent of a verb but a verb used intransitively, for example, during his journey to the West Country we read:I was moving down a long, straight road’ (71). The verbmove’ is used here intransitively. In a transitive structure such asMr Stevens moved the Chinaman’, we would have an active agent affecting a goal. On other occasions ‘move’ may be used in a sense equivalent to ‘he moved himself’ where ‘he’ is both agent and goal. But this is not the case here. On the contrary, we have a process where the subject of the verb is the goal affected by the actionit is as if we had something like ‘I was affected by movement’. Once again then, Stevens is not seen as instigating action, but as being affected by it.

18When Stevens is the agent of a material process, and therefore responsible for an action, such a clause becomes relegated to a dependent clause, to subordinate position, so that his actions are as deeply buried as his true feelings, as repressed as his emotions: ‘I would suppose it was shortly after four o'clock that I left the guest house’ (27). What is highlighted in this sentence is subjective modality,I suppose’, modified further by the presence of a modal auxiliary ‘would’. What could have been an absolute statement: ‘I left the guest house after four o'clock’ is qualified, cloaked in uncertainty. This tone of doubt that pervades the novel increases the impression that Stevens is not totally in control of the narrative, inviting us to regard Stevens as an unreliable narrator who suppresses information, his incapacity to remember correctly being proof of his desire to forget. At other times it is objective modality that is highlighted, as in the opening sentence of the novel: ‘lt seems increasingly likely that . . .’ (3) so that again the material process is not only buried beneath other main clauses but in fact is undermined further by the modality. Thus the clauses containing material processes have been rankshifted to fonction as complement in object position. At the same time Stevens’s obsession with what he thinks, supposes, believes and his use of factive verbs foreground an impression not the action: ‘I believe I was again motoring’ (71) or ‘I believe I came’ (84) or ‘I have a distinct feeling that it was at that moment I first sensed something odd’ (90). Thus, Stevens distances himself from the action framed bybelieve’, representing it as being potentially open to question. As a result, Stevens appears Jess accountable for his actions.

19All these aspects of transitivity examined so far are to be found in the various references to Stevens’s motoring trip. It is as if the trip takes place without his making any decision. He underlines from the start that his employer suggested it:The idea of such a journey came about, I should point out, from a most kind suggestion putto me by Mr Farraday himself'(3). Once he has left Darlington hall, Stevens constantly refers to his journey as taking him places as if the journey instigated the action:The first day of my trip is now completed [. . .]. This expedition began this morning’ (23), instead of ‘I have now completed the first day of my trip . . . I began the expedition this morning’. Or we read ‘The route enabled me to take in a fair number of the sights’ (70), with Stevens as beneficiary of the action instead of actor as in ‘I was able to visit by this route’. At other times the motor car, an inanimate object, is portrayed as being the agent of a material process, as initiating the action:The Ford continued its climb [. . .] then came to a hait’ (170). Mirroring this is the predominant use of the reflexive form of the verb ‘to find’. Stevens continually finds himself somewhere: as if he is not responsible at ail for his whereabouts, as if he himself has taken no decision: ‘ I found myself settled here’ (26),I found myself wandering’ (28),I find myself going over in my mind’ (49),I found myself slowing the Ford ‘(70),I found myself more than occupied’ (98),I found myself in a narrow Jane’ (123), ‘I found myself getting lost’ (127), ‘I find myself now in the attic room’ (168),’ I found myself out on a long road’ (169),I found myself on a paved path’ (272). It is difficult not to see a certain irony in this pervasive use of the verb. It could well be argued that Stevens never really finds himself.

20At other times there is avoidance of a finite form so that the person and tense are not obvious: ‘On inquiring where the bathroom was, the woman told me’ (27) instead of When I inquired’, On looking out of the windows one saw’ (27) instead of ‘When I looked out of the windows I saw’. The cumulative effect of these structures means that Stevens refuses to establish any cause and effect, refuses to acknowledge his own role in events, things simply happen to him or as he himself says:a most discomforting set of events began to unfold around me’ (190).

  • 10 Émile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, p. 255.

21This denial of self and the role one plays in one’s own destiny is to be found also in the use of pronouns. Stevens continually represses his role as agent by hiding behind the indefinite pronoun ‘one’ and in dialogues with the other characters he rarely names himself as subject of discourse, ‘I'', but at times even refers to himself in the third person, the form Benveniste calls the ‘non-personne’,10 the form reserved for persons and things remaining outside the speaker-addressee relationship. For example, to Mr Farraday, he justifies his denial of ail connection with Lord Darlington by saying ‘it is not customary in England for an employee to discuss his past employers’ (131). He excludes himself from the speaker-addressee relationship with his employers perhaps out of deference but in this instance it could also be seen as a way of repressing responsibility.

22Moreover, his inability to participate in a speaker addressee relationship is also portrayed by his inability to name his addressee asyou’, the most obvious example being with his father whom he also addresses as the third person ‘Father": ‘I hope Father is not being kept awake’ (67). Combined with the use of an agentless passive this use of the third person results in Stevens completely withdrawing from the speaker-addressee relationship: ‘It has been felt that Father should no longer be asked to wait at table’ (68).

  • 11 Michael Billig, Freudian Repression, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 54.

23Although Stevens frequently refers to the haziness of his memory, repression is not just ablanking out’ of memory. To quote Michael Billig ‘repression might be considered as a form of changing subject. It is a way of saying to oneself ‘talk, or think, of this, not that’. One then becomes engrossed in ‘this’ topic, so ‘that’ topic becomes forgotten’.11 Repression, then, can involve shifting attention away from the object or the topic to be repressed. This is also reflected in the use of specific linguistic techniques. Stevens’s use ofbut’ is one such way of changing the topic of discourse. When he first dwells on Miss Kenton’s leaving Darlington Hall (53) he proceeds to change the topic with ‘But I am digressing’ (53). In similar fashion, when Stevens first explores the connection between Lord Darlington and fascism, he steers away from the topic again with ‘But I drift’ (146). Thus he avoids talking about painful memories and also avoids facing up to the truth.

24Another striking aspect of Stevens’s mind style is his use of negation. On a purely grammatical and lexical level, he frequently uses double negatives, and this contributes to a point we have already considered, the refusal to state emotions and opinions clearly. Thus he says, for example, ‘the pressures [. . .] were nevertheless not inconsequential’ (80) instead ofwere consequential’, not at all out of keeping’ (139) rather thanin keeping’, I did not fail to visit’ (28) is preferred toI visited’, ‘would not be an unsuitable setting’ (92) is substituted for ‘would be a suitable setting’, it would not be unfair to suggest’ (142) is used instead of ‘it would be fair to suggest’, it was not impossible that’ (186) rather than ‘it was possible that’.

  • 12 Sigmund Freud, ‘Negation’, The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, London: Yintage, 1995, p 666–69.

25At another level, it is possible to see a connection between Stevens’s use of negation and the role of negation generally in repression. In his essay ‘Negation’, Freud writes that ‘the content of a repressed image or idea can make its way into consciousness, on condition that it is negated. [. . .] To negate something in a judgement is, at bottom, to say: “This is something which I should prefer to repress!” A negative judgement is the intellectual substitute for repression; itsno” is the hallmark of repression, a certificate of origin-like, let us say, “Made in Germany”.’12 If we follow this reasoning then we are invited to read the opposite of what is actually being said by Stevens. When he statesit is not for me to suggest that I am worthy of ever being placed alongside the likes of thegreat’ butlers’ (114), he is in fact suggesting that he should indeed be placed with them. When he comments on the mistakes he has been making under his new employer by sayingthere is no reason to believe them to be the signs of anything more sinister than a staff shortage’ (I 49), he is in fact contemplating just that. When he saysit is not simply my fantasy that the state of the silver has made a small, but significant contribution towards the easing of relations between Lord Halifax and Herr Ribbentrop’ (144) one is led to think that it is indeed fantasy on his part. Such denials clearly present themselves as replying to the opposite claim or belief.

26Moreover, we can take this one step further and infer that certain words used by Stevens are in fact used to mean something else. One striking example is the way he uses the adjectiveprofessional’ to refer to his meetings with Miss Kenton at the end of each day (155). Her possible departure from Darlington Hall would be a ‘professional Joss’ (180) and he describes their relationship in terms of ‘a fine professional understanding’ (173). He sets off to see her again some twenty years later believing their interview willbe largely professional in character’. Another term is ‘triumph’ used to describe his feelings on recalling the evening of his father’s death (115) and the day he failed to comfort Miss Kenton on the news of her aunt’s death (239). These words hide what Stevens really means. He purports to be telling the truth but some linguistic discrepancy, the use of a word in an unusual context, usually suggests that things are otherwise: the adjectiveprofessional’ used in the context of cosy cups of cocoa in Miss Kenton’s parlour, suggests he is not facing up to the truth as does his use of the hyperbolic adverboverwhelmingly’ (155) used to qualify professional. This is modified some lines later topredominantly’ (156). In similar fashion, the termtriumph’ is placed besidesad associations’ (I15) ordowncast’ (238).

  • 13 Fowler, Roger, Linguistics and the Novel (1977), Arrowsmith: Bristol, 1985, p. 76.

27The creation of a particular mind-style depends uponcumulatively, consistent structural options, agreeing in cutting the presented world to one pattern or another’.13 In other words, it is not the presence of just one feature of style that creates the portrait of a man seeking to repress the truth but the combination of the various linguistic devices that we have studied in this paper. The analysis of Stevens’s choice of vocabulary and circumlocutions shows that he is unable to reveal his feelings frankly, but can only allude to events that play a crucial role in his life in a roundabout fashion or, at best, by using indeterminates. The study of the transitivity patterns, the use of nominalizations, and the use of specific clausal patterns reveal that Stevens portrays himself as a man who rarely acts on his own initiative, as one who does not instigate the course of events. By doing so, he denies responsibility and persona! accountability for his actions. He even distances himself from his own actions by referring to himself in the third person.

28All these stylistic features combine to Jead us to infer that Stevens is hiding the truth from himself, or, at best, gingerly considering it only to steer away from it immediately by the use ofbut’ or negation.

29What we have then, in The Remains of the Day, is the portrayal of what Ishiguro himself describes asthe mind of someone trying to examine something while at the same time trying to avoid it’. The various linguistic strategies used throughout the novel reveal a man trying to repress what he cannot admit to himself. What is said is intimately linked to what is unsaid.

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Bibliographie

Benveniste, Émile, Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris: Gallimard, 1966.

Billig, Michael, Freudian Repression, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Fowler, Roger, Linguistics and the Novel (1977), Arrowsmith: Bristol, 1985.

FREUD, Sigmund,Negation’, The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, London: Vintage, 1995.

Gallix, François, ‘À la recherche de quelques clés interprétatives du titre The Remains of the Day’, Lectures d’une œuvre: The Remains of the Day, ed. F. Gallix, Paris: Éditions du Temps, 1999.

Halliday, M.A.K., An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Edward Arnold, 1985.

lshiguro, Kazuo, The Remains of the Day (1989), London: Faber, 1996.

SCHAFFER, Brian W., Understanding Kazuo lshiguro, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

Vorda, Allan and Kim Herzinger,An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro’, Mississippi Review 20 (1991): 131–54.

Website: http://www.resort.com/~prime8/0rwell/patee.html

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Notes

1 Allan Yorda and Kim Herzinger,An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro’, Mississippi Review 20 (1991), p. 135–63.

2 Brian W. Shaffer, Understanding Kazuo lshiguro, Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998, p. 80.

3 Michael Billig, Freudian Repression, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 13.

4 Ali references are to the Faber edition of 258 pages (reprinting of 1996). Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, London: Faber, 1990 (1989).

5 Fowler, Roger, Linguistics and the Novel, 1977, Arrowsmith: Bristol, 1985, p. 103.

6 Ibid., p. 104.

7 Cf. François Gallix, ‘À la recherche de quelques clefs interprétatives du titre The Remains of the Day’, Lectures d’une œuvre: The Remains of the Day, Paris: Éditions du Temps, 1999, p. 30.

8 George Orwell, The Politics ofLanguage, 1946. http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html.

9 M.A.K. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Edward Arnold, 1985.

10 Émile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, p. 255.

11 Michael Billig, Freudian Repression, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 54.

12 Sigmund Freud, ‘Negation’, The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, London: Yintage, 1995, p 666–69.

13 Fowler, Roger, Linguistics and the Novel (1977), Arrowsmith: Bristol, 1985, p. 76.

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Linda Pillière, « The Language of Repression: a Linguistic Approach to Ishiguro’s Style »Études britanniques contemporaines [En ligne], 27 | 2004, mis en ligne le 09 septembre 2025, consulté le 24 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/16768 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/14z5q

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