Module 3

Language and Styles in Prose

In this Module:

1. Style and Style Variation

2. The Grammar of Complex Sentences
3. Discourse Structure and Point of View
4. Speech Presentation
5. Prose Analysis

Introduction:
Welcome to Module 3! This module focuses on how stylistics is used in prose like
novels, short and adventure stories. As you go along to each lesson, we can see the different
style variation of some literary text, we will be classifying also the two main aspects of
language variation, and identify how complex sentence structures are formed in a particular
prose.

Part of this module also is to understand some aspects of point of view in relation to
the differing discourse architectures of different novels, and identify how character speech is
being presented. With that, we can see how different aspects of analysis need to be joined
together in a complete stylistic analysis of a passage.

At the completion of this module, you should be able to:

• Identify two main aspects of language variation;
• Demonstrate knowledge on the use of complex sentence in characterizing the authorial
and text styles of the prose;
• Explain the concepts and distinctions of point of view in discourse;
• Use some textual linguistic indicators of point of view in discourse; and
• Discuss some general aspects point of view in relation to the differing discourse
architectures of different novels.
 Lesson Style and
1 Style Variation

Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this lesson, you are expected to:
• differentiate dialect and register as major
indicators of language variation; and
• examine particular texts by analyzing styles of an
author.

Introduction:
In this lesson, you can see that style is all around us - as long it is to make possible other
equivalent choices - and the choice is repeated, it has the potential to form a style. Hence, you
will find out that repeated language behavior of an author at any linguistic level can contribute
to a style.

In addition, this lesson requires you more to have an extensive reading on different
literary texts for you to analyze the different kinds of styles, and style variation in texts because
as you go along with the topic, you will see how other writers can signal meanings and attitudes
by borrowing authorial styles by borrowing from different registers of English (so-called
reregistration) and by switching from one style/register to another inside particular texts.

4 PICs- 1 WORD
Activity Below are the three (3) sets of four (4) pictures with texts that
require you to guess what specific word fits with the theme of
the photos presented. Thus, the scrambled word for each item
will serve as your hint.

v
Mother= Ermat Police- Silup HINT: NGLANS ANSWER:_____________________________
__

Father= Erpat Money= Datung

 Purita Kalaw= Cookie Master=
No Money Cooking
HINT: AGY NOGLI ANSWER:_____________________________
__
.

48 years= Late Lafang= Eating

HINT: SHMOYMNO ANSWER:_____________________________

__

Based on the activity, what is meant by the answers

above? And what do you think is the advantage of knowing
those?
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 Abstraction
LANGUAGE VARIATION: DIALECT

Dialects are semi-permanent language varieties of language which vary mainly

according to geographical region and social class (cf. Yorkshire dialect, Lancashire dialect,
working class dialect, middle class dialect). But dialects can also be related to other factors (it
is arguable, for example, that male and female language varieties and language differences
related to age are dialectal). Many people equate dialects with accents, but accents only account
for dialect variation in relation to pronunciation (phonetics), and dialects also vary in terms of
other linguistic levels, particularly lexis and grammar.

Many non-linguists assume that Standard English (the English typically spoken, for
example, by BBC newscasters and university lecturers) is not a dialect, but is 'proper English'.
But linguists would argue that Standard English, the language of the educated, is also really a
dialect related to class and educational background which just happens to have a higher status
and more widespread use than the other dialects. There are, in any case, many different varieties
of standard English (for example English Standard English is different from American and
Australian Standard English, and within the UK linguists often distinguish between Northern
and Southern varieties of Standard English (mainly, but not exclusively, in terms of accent).

Mick Short's linguistic history can be seen as an example. Mick comes from a working
class family background. His family lived in the country in East Sussex, and so he grew up
speaking a Sussex country dialect. Then, when he went to grammar school he gradually lost
his dialect ('had it beaten out of him', he sometimes claims). He now speaks a form of Standard
English, but his wife and children always laugh when he loses his temper or goes to visit
relatives in Sussex, because he soon reverts to an accent similar to the one he had when he was
a child.

Dialect is a variety of a language that signals where a person comes from. The notion
is usually interpreted geographically (regional dialect), but it also has some application in
relation to a person’s social background (class dialect) or occupation (occupational dialect).
The word dialect comes from the Ancient Greek dialektos “discourse, language, dialect,” which
is derived from dialegesthai “to discourse, talk.”

A dialect is chiefly distinguished from other dialects of the same language by features
of linguistic structure- i.e., grammar (specifically morphology and syntax) and vocabulary. In
morphology (word formation), various dialects in the Atlantic states have clim, clum, clome,
or cloome instead of climbed, and, in syntax (sentence structure), there are “sick to his
stomach,” “sick at his stomach,” “sick in,” “sick on,” and “sick with.”

On the level of vocabulary, examples of dialectal differences include American English

subway, contrasting with British English underground; and corn which means “maize” in the
United States, Canada, and Australia, “wheat” in England, and “oats” in Scotland.
Nevertheless, while dialects of the same language differ, they still possess a common core of
features.

Although some linguists include phonological features (such as vowels, consonants,

and intonation) among the dimensions of dialect, the standard practice is to treat such features
as aspects of accent. In the sound system of American English, for example, some speakers
pronounce greasy with an “s” sound, while others pronounce it with a “z” sound. Accent
differences of this kind are extremely important as regional and class indicators in every
language. Their role is well recognized in Great Britain, for example, where the prestige accent,
called Received Pronunciation, is used as an educated standard and differences in regional
accent, both rural and urban, are frequent. There is far less accent variation in Canada,
Australia, and large parts of the United States.

Below is an excerpt from Emily Bronte's famous 19th Century novel entitled Wuthering
Heights. Nellie Dean is reading out a letter which Isabella Linton, who has recently married
Heathcliff, has written to her. In this part of the letter Isabella reports part of a conversation she
had with the servant Joseph.

The contents of the pan began to boil, and he turned to

plunge his hand into the bowl I conjectured that this preparation
was probably for our supper, and, being hungry, I resolved it
should be eatable; so, crying out sharply, "I'll make the
porridge!" I removed the vessel out of his reach, and proceeded
to take off my hat and riding habit. "Mr. Earnshaw," I continued,
"directs me to wait on myself: I will. I'm not going to act the lady
among you, for fear I should starve."
"Gooid Lord!" he muttered, sitting down, and stroking
his ribbed stockings from the knee to the ankle. "If there's to be
fresh ortherings - just when I getten used to two maisters, if I
mun hev a mistress set oe'r my heead, it's like time to be flitting.
I niver did think to see t' day that I mud lave th' owld place - but
I doubt it's nigh at hand!"

What dialect does Isabella write in and what dialect is Joseph represented as speaking?

Isabella appears to use a fairly formal Standard English. This will be appropriate to her
social status as mistress of the household and an educated woman (many women would not
have been able to write at this time). Joseph is an uneducated Yorkshire man, and so is given a
dialect representation. The variation between the Standard English of the novel's narration (and
also Isabella's letter here) and the dialect-indicating devices for Joseph help us to imagine him
more vividly. The fact that he speaks in the way that he does helps us to picture him as rough,
uneducated, dressed in working clothes, and so on.

What feature mark Joseph's dialect?

• Graphology and Pronunciation

The spelling of 'gooid' for 'good' may be a graphological indication of accent, or perhaps
an unusual pronunciation indicating his extreme surprise at what Isabella has just said.
'Ortherings' is an indication of a Yorkshire dialect pronunciation of 'orderings' (which
is also an unusual lexical form of 'orders'). Other straightforward graphological
 indicators of dialect are: 'maisters' for 'masters', 'mun' for 'must', 'hev' for 'have', 'o'er'
for 'over', 'niver' for 'never', 'mud' for 'might', 'lave' for 'leave' and 'owld' for 'old'. It is
interesting how close some of these forms ('lave' and 'owld' are to Molloy's Northern
Irish indicators we saw in Task B. The use of 'heead' for 'head' suggests a lengthening
and diphthongization of the vowel which supports the possibility that 'gooid' is
dialectal. The most stereotypical Yorkshire dialect accent indicators are the two forms
for 'the', 't'' and 'th'', depending on whether the following phoneme is a consonant or a
vowel. These are well-known markers of Yorkshire dialect.

• Grammar
'Getten' for 'have gotten'

• Lexis

'Ortherings' for 'orders', 'flitting' for 'leaving', 'nigh' for 'near' (though this use is common
in many regional dialects)

LANGUAGE VARIATION: REGISTER

Dialect variation, because it is semi-permanent, is language variation which helps to distinguish

one person, or group of people from others. But all of us are also involved in another kind of
language variation, which is much more rapid. We vary our language from one situation to
another many times in the same day. Typically, the English we use when we write is different
from the English we use when we speak, the language students use to write literature essays is
different from the language used to write linguistics or biology essays, and the English we use
in formal situations like lectures and seminars is different from the English we use when
chatting to friends in the coffee bar. This kind of language variation, which can vary from
minute to minute in the same day, is usually called register.

Register can vary according to Medium, Domain or Tenor:

• Medium (sometimes called 'mode' by other writers): Your language changes according
to the medium used (c.f. 'the language of speech', 'the language of writing').

Example: Monday 5 October

Dear Dan,

I'm writing you a quick note as I missed you this afternoon. Would it be possible for you to take my
first-year stylistics seminar for me next Thursday at 3pm? Because Frank is ill the department needs
someone senior to take his place at the University's Admissions Committee meeting, and our beloved
leader says I'm the only person who knows all the relevant background details. The meeting clashes
with my class, I'm afraid, which will be very difficult to reschedule, and as far as I can see, you are
the best person to take it over. I hope you can you help me out. I'd be grateful if you could let me
know tomorrow (Tuesday) at the latest.

Best wishes,

Mick

This is clearly a letter or memo, and so is an example of writing. The

graphological layout, and formulaic opening and closing, is typical of a letter. The
sentences are well-constructed and some of them (sentences 3 and 4) are quite complex
grammatically. This is typical of writing. Writers have plenty of time to compose their
sentences exactly as they want them to be. This often leads to longer and more complex
sentences than in speech. The lexis is also relatively formal and polite, which is also
typical of writing.

a) got a minute dan? sorry to um barge in like this but I need a f-favour - suddenly I can't teach my
thursday at 3 class - frank's gone down with some bug and er I've got got to reprerepresent the
department at the er the university admissions committee starts at 2 - can you run it for me?

yeah no problem

you're a mate I owe you one

no big deal I've already prepared the stuff for my class

This is a representation of some speech to roughly the same effect as the letter,
in the form of a transcription of the conversation. Apart from the question marks, which
we've put in to help you, the dashes representing small pauses and the new line each
time a new speaker starts, there is no punctuation here. This is because punctuation is a
feature of writing, not speech. Besides exhibiting the turn-taking typical of speech, this
text contains examples of the non-fluency that is normal in rapid unscripted
conversation (so-called 'normal non-fluency'). Because we have little time to edit what
we say in rapid conversation, we typically produce 'performance disfluencies' as we
speak:

1. The text contains voiced and unvoiced fillers to give the speakers time to
formulate what they are trying to say - pauses, 'ums' and 'ers';
2. It has unnecessary repetitions of words and parts of words 'got to
reprerepresent';
3. The grammar is more fluid than the grammar of writing, making it difficult to
decide where the sentence boundaries should be (indeed there is an issue about
whether speech has sentences in the same way that writing does. At one point
the speaker seems to move from one grammatical structure to another, without
completing the first ('the department at the er the university admissions
committee starts at 2')

The lexis is also much more informal than the memo, as is some of the grammar (cf.
the elliptical 'got a minute dan' at the beginning.)

b) From: Short, Mick

Sent: 05 October 2002
To: McIntyre, Dan
Subject: can you do me a favour

Hi Dan
I need a quick favour. Can you tyeach my class Tyhursday @3? Frank's got a bug and Tony wants
me to take his place at the admissions cttee. Sorry to dump on you.
ThisM example is clearly an email message, with an automatically generated
header. Its header could possibly be a memo header, but when typing memo-headers,
 writers do not normally use '0' before the numbers 1-9. The subject line also contains a
couple of orthographical oddities, which could well just be errors. The first word does
not have a capital, and there is no question mark to accompany the interrogative
grammatical structure.

This kind of disfluency is repeated in the body of the email itself. Typing errors
have not been corrected. The informal email between friends or colleagues is often said
to be a register which bears a mixture of features associated with speech on the one
hand and writing on the other. Essentially, it is very rapid typing, with writing
disfluencies (cf. the normal non-fluency of rapid speech) which are often only corrected
if they would lead to a communication problem. The use of the abbreviated word forms
'@' 'cttee' and 'M', and the elliptical last sentence also indicate informality and the need
for speed. But the overall graphological design of the message itself resembles the letter
form, and the salutation and signature are informal variants of that form.

• DOMAIN (sometimes called 'field' by other writers): Your language changes

according to the domain that the language is related to. This includes (a) the subject
matter being spoken or written about (cf. 'the language of science', 'the language of law')
and (b) the function that the language is being used for (cf. 'the language of advertising',
'the language of government'). Note that the 'Style Variation in USA' and 'Style
Variation in a Poem' exercises were effectively exercises in spotting register variations
according to domain inside literary texts. This is sometimes called reregisteration or
register borrowing.

Example:
a)
3.2

The following provisions of this clause are a Statement of the general aims of the
Charity to which the Trustees are (subject to the following) to have regard at all
times but no part of or provision in such Statement is to qualify derogate from
add to or otherwise affect the Objects set out in clause 3.1 and the furtherance of
the Objects (which shall in the event of any conflict prevail over such Statement)

This is an extract from a legal document setting up a charitable trust. 'Derogate'

is a term that does not often crop up outside the law, and various other terms (e.g.
'clause' 'provisions') have special meanings here compared with their more normal uses.
Besides the somewhat arcane lexis, the grammar is complex, and also involves list
constructions with frequent use of 'and' and 'or'. And apart from sentence- and word-
initial capitals (the latter indicating words specifically defined elsewhere in the
document), there is no punctuation. The grammatical and punctuation characteristics
are typical of legal documents because they need to be worded in such a way that, for
the lawyers at least (!) there are no misunderstandings or ambiguities about what is
being said.

b) The exact way in which information is 'coded' in the auditory nerve is not clear. However, we know
that any single neurone is activated only by vibration on a limited part of the basilar membrane.
Each neurone is 'tuned' and responds to only a limited range of frequencies. This information
about frequency can be coded in terms of which neurones are active or 'firing' with spikes. This
form of coding is called 'place' coding. Information about sound level may be carried both in the
rate of firing (i.e. the number of spikes per second) and in terms of the number of neurones which
are firing.
 This is an extract from The Oxford Companion to the Mind, a book on the nervous
system written for students of psychology, biology and medicine. It has obvious
biological technical terms (e.g. 'auditory nerve', 'neurone'), and like the legal document,
is written so that complex material can be understood clearly. Terms not already
introduced are defined as the text goes along, and important metaphorical uses are
signaled by inverted commas. This text is considerably less complex grammatically
than the legal extract. The language of science is usually fairy formal, though, and this
text is no exception. Apart from the technical terms and formal vocabulary items like
'however' and 'in terms of', the prevalence of passive constructions is a marker both of
formality and, more generally, of the language of science. There are six passive
constructions in this six-sentence (105 words) extract:

1. . . . information is 'coded' in the auditory nerve . . .

2. . . . any single neurone is activated only by vibration on a limited part of the
basilar membrane . . .
3. Each neurone is 'tuned' . . .
4. This information about frequency can be coded . . .
5. This form of coding is called 'place' coding.
6. Information about sound level may be carried both in the rate of firing . . .

• TENOR: The tenor of your language (e.g. how politely or formally you speak) changes
according to (a) who you are talking or writing to (cf. the language we use when talking
to close friends compared with that used when talking to strangers or people who are
socially distant from us) and (b) the social situation you find yourself in (e.g a child
whose mother is a teacher will talk to her in different ways, depending on whether they
are at home or at school).

Example:

Below are two short extracts (headline and the first sentence) about the same
news item (i.e. same domain) from two different newspapers (i.e. same medium and
domain). One is from a UK tabloid newspaper and the other from a broadsheet. Hence
the register differences will relate to tenor - what section of the community the
newspapers are aimed at.

a)
PENSION AXE VOW
UNIONS yesterday threatened a wave of strikes to
stop bosses axing workers' pension schemes.

This extract is from a tabloid, page 2 of The Sun for Monday, September
9, 2002. The large size and graphological style of the headline (white capitals
on a black background) is typical of the attention-grabbing style of the tabloids,
 as is the grammar of the headline (a noun-noun sequence: all three words are
nouns, with more than one way of construing the semantic relationships among
them, which then have to be spelled out in the first sentence of the article). This
in itself indicates the typical relationship between the paper and its relatively
uneducated typical readership, many of whom who may well not read much
more than this newspaper each day. So attention has to be grabbed and then
held. Two of the three words in the headline ('axe' and 'vow' are nouns derived
from verbs, making them feel very active, and the processes referred to are fairly
emotive, helping to keep attention.

The first sentence of the text is pretty straightforward grammatically,

and is only 14 words long where possible, simple straightforward lexical items
are used ('bosses', 'workers'), and in a way that brings out as starkly as possible
their oppositional nature. There is also quite a lot of other emotionally loaded
lexis - 'threatened', 'wave', 'axing' - again aimed at portraying the issue is as
extreme terms as possible. This contrasts considerably with what we find in the
other extract.

So this writing is simple and colorful, in order to catch, and hold, the
attention of its mainly working class, relatively uneducated readership.

b) TUC warns of strikes over pensions crisis

BRITAIN'S EMPLOYERS were put on alert
yesterday that employees were increasingly
prepared to take industrial action to defend their
pensions, now the single most important issue at
work.
This extract is from the beginning of an article in a broadsheet, page 1
of The Independent for Monday, September 9, 2002. The graphological style of
the headline is less striking (lower case apart from the acronym, no white on
black background effect) and the letters are smaller. In contrast with the Sun,
grammatically, this headline is an elliptical simple sentence (and the semantic
relations within it are clear from the headline alone), and the lexis is
considerably less emotive, even though 'strike' and 'crisis' occur. Instead of the
'bosses' and 'workers' in The Sun, we get the more abstract and more formal
nouns 'employers' and 'employees', and similarly, 'wave of strikes' in The Sun
becomes 'prepared to take industrial action' here. In speech act terms the
employers are not 'threatened' but merely 'put on alert'.

This sentence is twice the length of the one in The Sun, and also a bit more
complex grammatically. Overall, then, the writing in The Independent is more
formal and less emotive than in The Sun, assuming a more educated readership,
and a situation in which the newspaper does not have to work so hard to keep
its audience reading.

Reregistration (Register Borrwoing)

 'Reregistration', or 'register borrowing' is the term used by some stylisticians to refer to
register variation and its effects inside literary texts. This idea can involve not just marked
switches from one variety of language to another within a text, but also more subtle effects.

Example:

a) Register Borrowing (domain)

For a Tempest. Take Eurus, Zephyr, Auster and Boreas, and cast them together in one verse.
Add to these of rain, lightening and of thunder, (the loudest you can) quantum sufficit. Mix
your clouds and billows well together till they foam, and thicken your description here and
there with a quicksand. Brew your tempest well in your head before you set it a-blowing.

(Alexander Pope, directions for composing an epic, in 'The Guardian', 1713)

Pope borrows the register of the cooking recipe to give his instructions for
writing an epic, and the effect is clearly bathetic and humorous. Anyone can cook a
dish by following a recipe carefully. But writing a decent epic is a much more skilled
affair, which very few can manage. The recipe format is signaled by the prepositional
phrase title (which was common for recipes in the 18th century) and the use of
imperative constructions and the verbal lexis of cooking ('take', 'add', 'mix', 'foam',
'thicken', 'brew'). But the nouns which act as objects to these straightforward culinary
verbs refer to weather conditions, not foodstuffs, and four of them are Greek words
referring to the four winds (If you want to impress your friends: Eurus = east wind,
Zephyr = west wind, Auster = south wind and Boreas= north wind). So the irony comes
about because of the careful linguistic mixing of the arcane and the mundane.

b) Register Borrowing (tenor)

In the novel from which the extract comes, B. S. Johnson's Christie Malry, also
known as Christie, who is a clerk, and also keeps a careful account (via the double entry
book-keeping method - hence the book's title) of those who do not treat him well, is
secretly undermining the firm he works for, and the people in it, to get his own back on
them. He has been instructed by his section head, Wagner, to deliver a letter to another
section head, Skater. But Christie has secretly destroyed the letter. Matters now come
to a head when Skater, angry that no action appears to have been taken in spite of his
letter, rings Wagner to find out what is going on.

In the text below the humor comes about because of a marked contrast between the
character of the conversation and the language used to represent it.

OWN DOUBLE ENTRY

B. S. Johnson's Christie Malry

Skater's assertive roar when he was told that no letter had arrived could be heard several more desks
away; his proposal was that (if he were there) he would defenestrate Wagner. Christie's Section Head was riled at
this, and, forgetting he was putting the company's reputation in jeopardy, he suggested that were Skater to come
within a hundred yards of him he would (before he could carry out his threat) be subjected to a rapid process of
trituration. Skater responded with a distinctly unfair (for it was accurate) divination, from Wagner's telephone, of
the Section Head's helminthoid resemblances. Wagner snapped back with the only word he could think of at the
time, cryptorchid, though as he had never had the necessary opportunity of observing, let alone carrying out a
count, Christie felt that his superior had compromised his integrity at this point. And with sounds of gulping
his proposal was that (if he were 'Defenestrate' is a formal, Latinate
there) he would defenestrate term, meaning to throw someone
Wagner out of a window (cf. the
Defenestration of Prague [1618],
when the Thirty Years War was
sparked off because two Austrian
officials were thrown out of the
windows of Prague castle). Here
the formality of 'defenestrate' and
'his proposal was that' is clearly at
odds with Skater's angry threat to
Wagner. Of course it is possible
that Skater actually said something
like 'I propose to defenestrate you if
you were here'. But given that, in
spite of the fact that he is on the
other end of a telephone, 'his
assertive roar' could be heard
several desks away from Wagner's,
it is more likely that he used much
blunter language, and that the
formal language here is being used
to signal Christie's detached and
amused attitude to the considerable
upset he has secretly caused. In
other words, the 3rd-person
narration is assuming the same
viewpoint vas Christie.
HE suggested that were Skater to Wagner's response to Skater's rude
come within a hundred yards of threat is clearly a retort in kind. But
him he would (before he could again there is a mismatch between
carry out his threat) be subjected what is being portrayed and the
to a rapid process of trituration tenor of the language used to
portray it. 'Trituration', by the way,
is a Latinate term, referring to the
process of grinding something to a
powder.
the Section Head's helminthoid Skater now verbally abuses
resemblances. Wagner, but his abuse is
represented in arcane lexis, this
time derived from Greek. A
 helminth is a worm, and so
'helminthoid' means worm-like.
Again, Skater is most likely to have
told Wagner rather directly that he
looks like a worm, and the 3rd-
person narrator's arcane lexis
suggests Christie's pleasure (he is
one-up not just because of the
chaotic social relations he has
secretly caused, but also in the way
he appears to represent that chaos
to himself linguistically.
Wagner snapped back with the Wagner snapped back with the only
only word he could think of at the word he could think of at the time,
time, cryptorchid. cryptorchid
he line the conversation lapsed An eirenicon is a peace proposal.
without any sign of an eirenicon. The formal and arcane, Greek-
derived word helps us to feel
Christie's pleasure as the phone
conversation (but clearly not the
hostilities!) come to an end.

Style

In this section, we will explore the notion of style in general terms. We will try to
answer the two questions:

a) What is style?
b) What kinds of things and activities have style?

In literary studies, style is most often associated with individual authors, and, indeed,
we will spend some time in this topic examining the notion of authorial style in more detail.
Two different novelists might, for example, write a description of the same event in very
different ways, and the fact that writers have different styles means that it is possible for other
writers to parody them. A good example of this is the comic novel by David Lodge called The
British Museum is Falling Down. Part of the fun of this novel is that he parodies the style of
ten other famous novelists (including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and C.P. Snow) at various
points in his novel. The reader has to play the "spot the parody" game.

Below is a small excerpt from a well-known poem, 'The Song of Hiawatha', by the 19th
century American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 22 cantos and around 150 pages, it
tells the epic story of the American Indian prophet Hiawatha, who uses his magical powers to
bring peace to the warring Indian nations. The poem, which gets its distinctive meter from the
Finnish national epic, the 'Kalevala', is loved by many and ridiculed by others. Thus, the excerpt
below is from the beginning of canto 2, 'The Four Winds'.

The Four Winds

'Honour be to Mudjekeewis!'
 Cried the warriors, cried the old men,
When he came in triumph homeward
With the sacred belt of Wampum,
From the regions of the North-Wind,
From the kingdom of Wabasso,
From the land of the White Rabbit.

He had stolen the belt of Wampum

From the neck of Mishe-Mokwa,
From the Great Bear of the mountains,
From the terror of the nations,
As he lay asleep and cumbrous
On the summit of the mountains,
Like a rock with mosses on it,
Spotted brown and grey with mosses.

The 19th Century Parody J. W. Morris

Do you ask me what I think of

This new song of Hiawatha,
With its legends and traditions
And its frequent repetitions
Of hard names which make the jaw ache,
And of words most unpoetic?
I should answer, I should tell you
I esteem it wild and wayward,
Slipshod metre, scanty sense,
Honour paid to Mudjekeewis,
But no honour to the muse.

Morris makes fun of the song of Hiawatha by saying critical things about it while using
the very forms he is being critical of. He mimics the strict 4-beat meter, which often puts a
grammatical word in a beat position, and makes a mess of it on purpose when he criticizes it
(you appear to need to turn 'sense' into a 2-syllable word). He uses repetitive structures and
'hard names' while criticizing them too. His criticism of repetitions in the original is
accompanied by crude 'elegant variations' - different words which clearly refer to roughly the
same thing (cf. 'legends and traditions' and 'wild and wayward').

• Do only individuals have style?

It is not just individuals who have style. Groups of people can also have different
styles of doing things, too. Indeed, whole nations often do the same thing in different
typical ways. Saying for example, the British sandwich style involves two slices of
buttered bread with a filling in between. The Danish sandwich, on the other hand, is
open, with just one slice of bread. Chinese cooking is based on the stir-fry technique,
whereas British cooking is based on oven-cooked dishes. These are effectively different
styles of cooking.
 And the products of human beings can have style too. Think of hair styles or dress
styles, for example, or their written equivalents like tabloid vs. broadsheet newspaper
styles. Note that the work we did on style variation was effectively about the borrowing
of styles from various different kinds of writing into literary texts, so that the style
varies from one part of the text to another, with resultant local textual effects.

• Scientific- Style Language

Look at the sequence of four sentences below. What level of language is being used
to create the variations in style here? What style label do you think characterizes the
different sequences and how is each style being created?

1. The door opened. A large man appeared. He was wearing a floppy hat. He was
eating a sandwich.
2. The door opened, a large man appeared, wearing a floppy hat, eating a
sandwich.
3. The door opened and a large man appeared. And he was wearing a floppy hat
and eating a sandwich.
4. Door open. Large man. Floppy hat. Eating sandwich.

The style changes here are based on grammatical variation. By and large, the
lexis does not change. Example 1 is a simple style. Each sentence is a simple sentence,
consisting of just one clause each. In number 2, we have an example of parataxis, or a
listing structure. There is one sentence, containing four clauses (the equivalent of the
four simple sentences in 1), each of which is juxtaposed, or listed together (cf. the
commas). In number 3, we have the style which is often called a 'coordinating' or
'additive' style. Each of the two sentences has two clauses coordinated together by 'and',
and the second sentences is also 'joined' to the first by 'and'. In number 4, we have a
style we might call 'elliptical'. We have four sentences, as in 1, but this time (a) the
grammatical words, (b) some word-internal grammatical markers and (c) some of the
lexical words which carry less information (cf. 'appeared') are omitted. Elliptical
sentences are often used to create 'impressionistic' styles of description.

Scientific-style language uses technical scientific terms, formal lexis and also plays up
the objective, replicable nature of the experiment by removing references to individuals.
The passive sentence is an important part of this process. English sentences demand
subjects, and active sentences have the agent in a transitive structure in the subject
position. The language of science uses passives, where necessary, to get the agent into
an optional position in the grammatical structure of the sentence, so that it can then be
removed, thus helping to give the writing an 'objective' style.

Example:

The copper sulfate was placed in a test-tube and heated

for 5 minutes with a Bunsen burner.

In this sentence, one lexical change has made (the replacing of 'put' by placed
to reflect the formality usually expected of scientific description). The original
sentences were in the active form (the agent in the sentence is in the subject position,
before the predicator, and the entity acted upon is in the object position, after the
 predicator). But in the example above, the grammatical form of the sentence has been
changed from active to passive. This involves putting the object acted upon into the
initial, subject position and putting the agent into a 'by-phrase' (by + NP). Then, finally,
the 'by phrase' has been deleted.

1. Mary put the copper sulfate in a test-tube.

2. The copper sulfate was placed in a test-tube by Mary.
3. The copper sulfate was placed in a test-tube.

• Authorial and Text Styles

This pointed out that the linguistic features which contribute towards a
particular authorial style will, at the same time, contribute towards the meaning and
effects of the particular text being examined, i.e. its text style. So, when we make the
comparisons below we will look at authorial style and text style simultaneously.

a) Sentence-length variation from the average

- How much did the sentences of each passage vary from the average?
b) Lexical Analysis
- Is the vocabulary composed mainly of basic, common-core terms (e.g. table,
tree, eye) or more abstract, learned or specialised terms (e.g. faith, metaphor,
neutron)?
- What areas of our vocabulary (semantic fields) do the words relate to (e.g.
the body, education, science, morality)? Remember that the semantic fields
you notice may sometimes be general (e.g. vegetation) and sometimes more
specific (e.g. trees).
- What words, if any, are repeated, and how often?
- How complex is the lexis (the complexity of words can be measured by
counting the number of syllables in each word)?
c) Semantic deviation
d) Grammatical parallelism
e) Grammar

Instructions: Read each of the extracted texts below and compare the passages with one
another. Write down your initial impressions you have about the style in which each passage
is written and try to give intuitive descriptive labels (if there is) which characterize the styles
of the three texts.

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (Chapter 1)

(1) His eyes were very dark brown and there was a hint of brown pigment in his eyeballs. (2)
His cheek-bones were high and wide, and strong deep lines cut down his cheeks, in curves
beside his mouth. (3) His lower lip was long, and since his teeth protruded, the lips stretched
to cover them, for this man kept his lips closed. (4) His hands were hard, with broad fingers
and nails as thick and ridged as little clam shells. (5) The space between thumb and forefinger
and the hams of his hands were shiny with callus.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (Chapter 3)

(1)Mr Bingley was good-looking and gentleman-like; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy,
unaffected manners. (2)His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion. (3)His
brother-in-law, Mr Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr Darcy soon drew the
attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report,
which was in general circulation within six minutes after his entrance, of his having ten
thousand a year. (4)The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies
declared he was much handsomer than Mr Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration
for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his
popularity: for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being
pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most
forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.

D. H. Lawrence's The Virgin and the Gypsy (Chapter 1)

(1)But Granny held her in her power. (2) And Aunt Cissie's one object in life was to look after
the Mater.

(3)Aunt Cissie's green flares of hellish hate would go up against all young things, sometimes.
(4)Poor thing, she prayed and tried to obtain forgiveness from heaven.(5) But what had been
done to her, she could not forgive, and the vitriol would spurt in her veins sometimes.

(6)It was not as if Mater were a warm, kindly soul. (7)She wasn't. (8)She only seemed it,
cunningly. (9)And the fact dawned gradually on the girls. (10)Under her old-fashioned lace
cap, under her silver hair, this old woman had a cunning heart, seeking for ever her own female
power. (11)And through the weakness of the unfresh, stagnant men she had bred, she kept her
power, as the years rolled on, from seventy to eighty, and from eighty on the new lap, towards
ninety.

References
Short, Mick (1996) Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, London: Longman,
chapter 1, pp. 1-35.

Carter, Ron (1993) 'Between languages: grammar and lexis in Thomas Hardy's "The Oxen"',
in Peter Verdonk (ed.) (1993) Twentieth-century Poetry: From Text To Context,
London: Routledge, chapter 5, pp. 57-67.

Leech, Geoffrey N. (1969) A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry, London: Longman, chapters
1 and 2.
Short, Mick (1993) 'To analyse a poem stylistically: "To Paint a Water Lily" by Ted Hughes',
in Peter Verdonk (ed.) (1993) Twentieth-century Poetry: From Text To Context,
London: Routledge chapter 1, pp. 5-20.

Simpson, Paul (1997) Language Through Literature, London: Routledge chapter 2, pp. 23-59.

Verdonk, Peter (1993) 'Poetry and public life: a contextualised reading of Seamus Heaney's
"Punishment"', in Peter Verdonk (ed.) (1993) Twentieth-century Poetry: From Text To
Context, London: Routledge chapter 9, pp. 112-33.

Widdowson, Henry (1983) 'The Conditional Presence of Mr Bleaney' in Ronald Carter (ed.)
Language and Literature, London: Allen & Unwin chapter 1, pp. 18-26.

Closure

Congratulations! You have made the first lesson completely. It is expected that you were
able to understand the lesson. Just continue to read intensive and extensively!