The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms

128 Lexis
structure, and ideological implications.
Linguistic criticism on discourse premisses
is a historically grounded practice of
analysis, seeking to interpret texts
with reference to their and our cultural
contexts and ideological systems. In this
approach the analysis of linguistic form,
and reference to context, are integrated
rather than divorced as in most modern
criticism. See R. Fowler, Literature as
Social Discourse (1981), Linguistic
Criticism (1986). Also M. L. Pratt,
Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary
Discourse (1977); A. Easthope, Poetry as
Discourse (1983); Norman Fairclough,
Language and Power (1989); Ronald
Carter, Language, Discourse and
Literature (1988); R. L. Trask, Language:
the basics (2004).
Lexis See DICTION, LANGUAGE.
Lisible See PLEASURE.
RGF
Literary mode of production The
concept of a ‘literary mode of production’
was developed by modern MARXIST
CRITICISM to explain the ways in which all
literary writings depend upon social
institutions and relations. Any form of
production draws upon certain material
forces (in the case of writing, paper, printing,
publishing technology and so on), but
these material forces are themselves part
of a set of social relations between producers,
intermediaries and consumers.
The social relations between a tribal bard,
chief and audience will differ from those
between an eighteenth-century poet,
aristocratic patron and readers, and these
in turn are contrastable with the often
isolated literary producer of our own day,
who produces work as a market commodity
for a rarely encountered audience.
Any society may contain a set of different,
even conflicting, literary modes of
production: the social relations between
the popular modern novelist, publishers
and readers contrast with those between
the writers, directors, actors and audiences
of a regional theatre group. Certain
literary modes of production may be
merely sub-sectors of what we might term
the ‘general’ mode of economic production
in society as a whole: modern-day
writing is largely part of the capitalist
publishing industry. But other literary
modes of production may represent survivals
from earlier societies, or may try to
prefigure new kinds of social relations in
society as a whole.
The concept of a ‘literary mode of
production’ does not merely belong to
what is termed the ‘sociology of literature’.
It is not a purely external fact about
literary writing, as the colour of a dustjacket
may be. On the contrary, it is part
of the critical analysis of literature itself.
Every work of literature, in however indirect
a fashion, implies how and by whom
it was written, and how and by whom it is
expected to be read. Every work posits an
‘implied author’ and an ‘implied reader’,
establishes tacit contracts and alliances
between itself and its audience. In order
to be accepted as ‘literature’ at all, the
work must be a certain kind of product
within certain social institutions; most
critics would not regard graffiti, which is
indubitably a mode of writing (often of
considerable interest and value) produced
for an audience, as an acceptable literary
topic for academic study. What counts as
‘literature’, in other words, is already a
matter of social (and ideological) definition;
a piece of writing may be ‘literary’
for one age and not for another. ‘Nonliterary’
writing may be treated in a
‘literary’ way, or vice versa.
The very definitions and criteria of
‘literature’, then, belong to a set of values
and ideas embedded in a literary mode of