Topic 6 (session A) - Style and Style variation > Authorial and text style > Task D > Our analysis of Austen

Task D - Our analysis: Jane Austen

The lexis of the Austen passage also feels more complex than the Steinbeck in lexical terms.

• There is considerably less evidence of our common-core vocabulary. Although we do get common-core words like 'sisters' and 'women', even these words may feel a bit less basic than 'eye' and 'brown', and we also see many words which are more learned and more abstract (e.g. 'countenance', 'attention', 'noble, 'circulation', 'mien', 'admiration', 'forbidding;', 'disagreeable'). These more learned words are usually derived from Latin and Greek (mainly via French borrowings into English after the Norman conquest in the Middle Ages), whereas our more 'basic' words are usually Germanic in origin, and existed in Old English prior to the Norman invasion.

• The semantic areas which the lexis is related to are social relations, social talk, perceptions and judgements. Indeed, while the Steinbeck lexis could best be characterised as physically descriptive, the Austen lexis is highly evaluative in terms of the perceptions of others and social qualities (e.g. 'good-looking', 'pleasant', 'fine' 'disagreeable', 'unworthy').

The patterns of repetition and related phenomena in the passage bring out some of the semantic areas referred to above which the descriptions focus on: social relations, perceptions of others and value terms (below we treat singulars and plurals together and also different forms of the same verb):

But in this passage there is another kind of repetition which is absent from the Steinbeck passage. We have a number of examples of different words or phrases being used to refer to the same, or very similar things. This kind of 'repetition using different words' is usually referred to as elegant variation. Examples are:

• 'good-looking' and 'pleasant countenance' (of Mr Bingley, S1)
• 'gentleman-like' and 'easy, unaffected manners' (of Mr Bingley, S1)
• 'fine tall person', 'handsome features' and 'noble mien' (of Mr Darcy, S3)
• 'fine figure of a man' and 'handsomer than Mr Bingley' (of Mr Darcy, S4)
• 'proud' 'above his company' and 'above being pleased' (of Mr Darcy, S4)
• 'forbidding' and 'disagreeable' (of Mr Darcy's countenance, S4)
• 'looked' and 'drew the attention' (S3), 'looked at' (S4), 'discovered' (S4)
• 'pronounced', 'declared' (these are all verbs related to the perceptions of those looking at the two men and what they said about them [social judgements])

These elegant variations focus on the physical and social perception of the two men by others in the room and involve a considerable amount of evaluative lexis too. Hence the elegant variation brings out the same semantic areas as the repetition, but in a different, more complex way, which emphasises the changing perceptions of the people in the room towards the two men being described, Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy. This helps to bring out the fact that this description is not an objective, photograph-like description, of the sort we saw with Steinbeck, but rather one involving the perceptions, values and prejudices of other characters. This all helps to explain our intuitive assessment of this passage as much more complex and biased.

Finally, the words in the passage are more complex than the Steinbeck in structural terms. Below we give comparative syllable counts, as we did for the Steinbeck passage.

Syllable count

We have coloured the 2-syllable words green, the 3-syllable words red, the 4-syllable words purple and the 5-syllable words blue:

Mr Bingley was good-looking and gentleman-like; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners.(1) His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion.(2) 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 five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year.(3) 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.(4)

Syllable statistics:

We also provide the Steinbeck figures below for comparison.

The single-syllable proportion in the Austen passage is much lower than the Steinbeck passage (a bit less than three quarters in proportional terms). The 2-syllable figures are twice the 12% of the Steinbeck passage, the 3-syllable proportion is four times higher than Steinbeck's 2%, and there are a number of 4- and 5-syllable words as well (the Steinbeck passage has none of these). Hence the syllable-count comparison consistently reveals that the Austen passage has more complex words as well as more complex sentences (as we saw in task B), and so confirms our intuitive judgement that this writing is pretty complex overall.

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