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STYLE, DICTION AND LANGUAGE
Style in fiction refers to the language conventions used to construct the story
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Thus a story's style could be described as richly detailed, flowing, and barely controlled, as in the case of
Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," or sparing and minimalist, as in the early work of Raymond Carver, to reflect
the simple sentence structures and low range of vocabulary
...
For example, Nathaniel
Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," written in the nineteenth century, uses diction and sentence
structure that might seem somewhat crisp and formal to contemporary readers: "With this excellent
resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil
purpose
...
To identify
a story's voice, ask yourself, "What kind of person does the narrator sound like?" A story's voice may be
serious and straightforward, rambunctiously comic, or dramatically tense
...

A story's style and voice contribute to its tone
...
For example, a story may convey an earnest and sincere tone toward its characters and
events, signaling to the reader that the material is to be taken in a serious, dramatic way
...

In the last line of Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," for example, an ironic spin emerges when we learn
that "the doctors said she died of heart disease, of joy that kills
...
In its broadest definition, style is the
way in which language is used (see Leech/Short 1981: 10 for a discussion of various definitions of
style)
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Obviously, most people are limited in the range of styles they have at their command,
and sometimes style expectations are deliberately flaunted: A newspaper report written in the style of a
love letter will no doubt cause a certain amount of surprise and thus possibly increase its effect
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There are utterances where style is used with more deliberation than in others
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In fact, it is partly the calculated
and deliberate use of language, or, the special attention the receiver pays to the use of language, that
makes a text literary (see What is Literature?)
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To put
the question another way, are we saying the identical thing when we use different means of saying it, or
is the meaning of the utterance (partly) produced by the way we say it? When A
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Housman, for

instance, says "Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters, trampled to the floor it spanned, and the tent of night
in tatters, straws the sky-pavilioned land", would it be the same as saying: "Get up mate, it's daylight"?
Or is there a difference in WHAT he says because of HOW he says it? Most modern criticism would
agree that form and content are not in fact clearly separable, that one is intrinsically dependent on the
other, and that a paraphrase never expresses exactly the same thing as the original utterance
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It is thus worth examining how it does that
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In other words, one examines which words are used and how
these words are put together
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Particularly in poetry and verse-drama one also focuses on the rhythmical patterns and sound effects
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Geoffrey Leech and Michael Short (1981) provide a list of categories for analysis on which most of the
following is based
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their ch
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Diction
The analysis of diction involves answering a series of questions, all relating to the use of vocabulary: its
origin, its effect, its grammatical categories
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What rhetorical devices are used on the levels of individual sound or word?
Most important of all remains the question: What effect does the use of diction have in this particular
text?
In classical rhetoric styles were classified into three main levels: the grand style, the middle style and
the low (or plain) style
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This
was called the principle of decorum, which was an influential concept well into the eighteenth century
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Poetry, perhaps more than other
types of literary texts, tends to use words or phrases that are not current in ordinary conversation, socalled poetic diction
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In this context,
social meanings can include group membership, personal attributes, or beliefs
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Variation can occur syntactically, lexically, and phonologically
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Note that a style is not a fixed attribute of a speaker
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Additionally, speakers often
incorporate elements of multiple styles into their speech, either consciously or subconsciously, thereby
creating a new style
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Labov primarily studied individual linguistic variables, and
how they were associated with various social groups (e
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social classes)
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"There are no single style speakers
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"Styles can be ranged along a single dimension, measured by the amount of attention paid to speech
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According to
studies conducted by Labov, this was one of the single most important factors that determined
whether or not an interlocutor would make a style-shift
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"
Labov characterized the vernacular as the original base mode of speech, learned at a very young
age, on which more complex styles build later in life
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"Any systematic observation of a speaker defines a formal context where more than the minimum
attention is paid to speech
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An interlocutor’s vernacular style is most likely displayed if they do not
perceive outside observers, and are not paying immediate attention to their own speech
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"
Quantitative analysis requires the kind of data that must be obtained in a very obvious, formal
way
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In his study of /r/-variation in New York Department
stores, he observed that those with a lower social class are less likely to pronounce postvocalic [r] in
words like fourth and floor, while those with a higher social class are more likely to pronounce
postvocalic [r] in their less careful speech
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That is, those with a middle social class often
alter their pronunciation of /r/ in a way that is generally indicative of a higher social standing, while
those with a lower or higher social class more or less maintain their original pronunciation (presumably
because they were either happy with their current position in the social hierarchy or resigned to it)
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She builds on Michael Silverstein’s notion of indexical order: the notion that
linguistic variables index a social group, which by association leads to the indexing of certain traits
stereotypically associated with members of that group
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However, the presence of
lack of postvocalic [r] can also function as a higher order indexical that points indirectly to traits
stereotypically associated with members of the upper or lower class
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According to this theory, any linguistic variable has its own indexical field spanning
any number of potential meanings; the meanings actually associated with the variable are determined by
social context and the style in which the variable is being used
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This view
of style revolves around variation, and interpretation of variation as a purely indexical system built from
ideological connections
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A variant and the social meanings it indexes are not inherently linked, rather, the social
meanings exist as ideologically mediated interpretations made by members of the social framework
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Mary Bucholtz’s approach to style also relies heavily on ideology
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" This continuum depends on the ideology of the speaker, for
they self-monitor depending on their ideologies concerning particular words
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Guey indexes a stance of
cool solidarity, and indirectly, [masculinity]
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Bucholtz argues that ideology connects the stylistic feature
of using guey with particular groups of people based on age, gender (male), and race
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This leads to the
indexing of groups with which the style is associated, and thus simplifies the indexical field at hand
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These theories maintain that style is
best viewed as consisting of smaller, more variable units known as stances
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An interlocutor’s use of language could imply,
for instance, that they feel a certain way about an issue at hand, or that they do not care for the subject,
or the people around them; these positions with respect to the context are different stances
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The set of stances interlocutors tend to repeat or use the most
often in certain contexts (or in general) comprise their style
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This approach focuses more on interaction and reaction in a linguistic context, rather than a static
identity or social group
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Kiesling writes:
“

In this view, personal styles are composed of a set, or repertoire, of stances, and a way of
speaking represents not simply a personal style but a stance that a person tends to adopt
repeatedly over time
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Emergence of new styles
Performative creation of new styles
The performative creation of style is the result of a desire to project a certain social image or stance
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An example of this performative style is exemplified by non-linguistic
situations
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"New-wave" teens who wished to be distinctive adapted a more rebellious fashion style,
wearing mostly dark clothes and pegged jeans, whereas popular, "preppy" girls tended towards light
pastel colors and straight designer jeans
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The table below compares resulting styles:
As Eckert demonstrates, the "preppy" girls who wished to maintain a slightly distinctive style combined
certain aspects of the "preppy" style with the "new-wave" style
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This is because they perceive that the eye makeup indexes an "adult" or "slutty"
characteristic, while the all-black color scheme is "scary"
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In a case study conducted by Podesva, he studies the style of a gay lawyer, who
combines certain aspects of common professional and gay linguistic features to create his own style,
indexing both a "professional lawyer" characteristic and a unique "gay" characteristic with his speech
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Obviously, individual variants
can be adopted by multiple styles
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In the Eckertian view, a person's linguistic style
identifies their position in an indexical field of social meanings
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DEFINITION OF STYLE, TONE, AND LANGUAGE
Style in fiction refers to the language conventions used to construct the story
...

Thus a story's style could be described as richly detailed, flowing, and barely controlled, as in the case of
Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," or sparing and minimalist, as in the early work of Raymond Carver, to reflect
the simple sentence structures and low range of vocabulary
...
For example, Nathaniel
Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," written in the nineteenth century, uses diction and sentence
structure that might seem somewhat crisp and formal to contemporary readers: "With this excellent
resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil
purpose
...
To identify
a story's voice, ask yourself, "What kind of person does the narrator sound like?" A story's voice may be
serious and straightforward, rambunctiously comic, or dramatically tense
...

A story's style and voice contribute to its tone
...
For example, a story may convey an earnest and sincere tone toward its characters and
events, signaling to the reader that the material is to be taken in a serious, dramatic way
...

In the last line of Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," for example, an ironic spin emerges when we learn
that "the doctors said she died of heart disease, of joy that kills

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