Manipulating word classes
A style with lots of adjectives: Our analysis of Hotel du lac
Comments about meaning and effect:
As we might expect, this passage contrasts with the 'verby' ones in
that it is a description of something static rather than an action passage,
and indeed the verbs are relatively few and the stative 'be' and 'have'
verbs predominate.
This description of the Hotel du Lac gives the impression of an establishment
which, although it apparently gives good service, is probably rather stuffy
and out of touch with the modern world. It is interesting to note that
although we learn a lot which is judgemental about the hotel, we are given
very little indication of what it looks like.
Analytical comments:
There are 11 adjectives in 71 words. This figure of 15.5% is more
than double the Ellegard norm (7.4%), indicating how adjectival the passage
is. It is also interesting to note that very few of the adjectives used
are straightforwardly descriptive. The only candidates would appear to
be 'earlier era', 'little
effort' and 'passing trade'. Some adjectives are straightforwardly
evaluative (e.g. 'excellent',
'impeccable') and the rest (e.g. 'stolid', 'dignified',
'spotless') are both descriptive and evaluative at the same time,
but with the emphasis on the evaluative. This is where the judgemental
feel to the description is coming from, and we can infer, because the
adjectives involving evaluation are a mixture of the positive and the
critical, that the narrator's attitude towards the hotel is rather negative
in spite of its stated merits.
Chapter 5 (pp. 343-80) of John Douthwaite's (2000) Towards a Linguistic
Theory of Foregrounding (Edizioni dell'Orso: Turin) has an extensive
and complete stylistic analysis of a longer passage from this novel which
begins with the above extract.
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