Analyzing style

Abstract

1. Style helps to characterize the speaker. A good writer, careful of style, uses connotations or associations to characterize. 2. Style creates tone, which is the value, that style or gesture gives to words. 3. Style can convey an author’s judgement of a character. 4. Style is also a means of persuasion. 5. Style is discovery. In striving to say exactly what he wants to say, the writer discovers a more accurate expression of what he wants to say. 6. Style results from linguistic choices; the more frequently these choices are exercised and the more wide-ranging they are, the higher the probability they will effectively express the writer’s unique thought and feeling. 7. Style sharpens expressive meaning as well as referential meaning. 8. Style is not mere ornament; rather it conveys important subtleties of meaning and evaluation, especially as they define the nature of the writer, his basic attitudes, his pre-suppositions, his moral stance, and his relation to his subject and his reader. In trying to analyze style, look for the unusual or unique features in the writing according to the following headings: