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 Ling 131: Language & Style
 

 Topic 6 (session A) - Style and Style variation > Style: what is it?

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Session Overview
Style Variation in USA
Language Variation: Dialect
Language Variation: Register
Style Variation in a poem
Reregistration
Style: What is it?
Authorial and text style
Style Variation Checksheet
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Style: what is it?

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

  • what is style?
    and

  • 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.

Chuckle Stop!

 

 


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