Style: what is it?
Our Answer To task F
The consistent graphological style oddity is that every word begins with
a capital letter. This suggests that each word in the sentence has to
be pronounced in a way that gives them high, and equal importance.
This leads us to imagine someone speaking (a) more slowly than usual,
(b) louder than usual, (c) using a primary stress for each word, no matter
what its lexical/grammatical status (and perhaps even a seperate intonation
unit for each word?) and (d) with lengthened pronunciation of the words
or even slight pauses between the words.
Authorial Style and Text Style
This last task does not just show us that graphetic and phonetic choices
can be style features. It also shows us that in a text the same feature
can, in principle, be a marker of style, and have particular meaning effects
at one an the same time. By characterising Mr Podsnap's speaking style
in theway that he does, Dickens also makes fun of him. Like so many Englishmen,
apparantly, Mr Podsnap assumes that everyone else should speak his language,
and his only contribution to international cooperation is to speak English
loudly and slowly. Learning to speak another language is clearly not for
him! The aspects of language choice which contribute to textual meaning
and effect are sometimes called text style. Clearly it will be
possible for the same feature to contribute to (a) authorial style and
(b) text style at the same time.
Now that we have explored the notion of style in general terms, we will
go on to compare in detail three short extracts which are typical of three
different well-known novelists.
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