5.2 Word choice and language use
Certain kinds of words and phrases, either specialised or commonplace, characterise a text (Moon, 1990). They represent specific grammar/word choices made by the writer, such as: adverbials and/or adjectivals, complex/simple noun groups, verb groups and single verbs where a specific type of verb dominates, for example, action or sensing, and the passive or active form has been deliberately chosen. The choice may indicate different social groups or an attempt on the writer’s part to be precise or ambiguous (Moon). (Turn to Part 6 of this program for further information on adverbials, adjectivals, noun and verb groups).
Word choice and language use are important in the writing of a specific kind of novel. If it is historical, the writer has to be sure to capture the period by the selection and use of vocabulary and turns of phrase peculiar to the times and culture which he/she is depicting, as well as naming the appropriate weapons and artefacts and showing their use within the story. The same can be said for the science fiction novel in which imaginative vocabulary naming objects and customs which supposedly would exist, would be used. The novel of realism has also to appear authentic with the vocabulary usage and turn of phrase reflecting modern times. The same applies also to the fantasy novel which places humans in circumstances which have some kind of magical quality about them. In fact, the writers of all genres rely on specific language and vocabulary to create the desired effects.
So the writer uses language in many different ways in the novel to achieve certain objectives, apart from those discussed in section 6 of this program. For example, he/she may need to bring alive a group of semi-literate folk who belong to a particular region of a country, for example, Ireland, England, Scotland, and make them sound authentic. To do this, the writer needs to reproduce the dialect of the region. He/she may, on the other hand, wish to depict the well-to-do and educated and contrast them with the less successful or not so well educated. In either case, the writer will use speech patterns that are typical of the group of people being depicted in the story.
In an historical novel, the writer needs to make the scene reflect the period and be believable and so may put in the mouths of the characters the style of speech/vocabulary of the period. Lastly, special names of artefacts, food, clothing, transport and weapons, style of buildings, names of historical persons of the period need also to be part of the historical text and its authenticity.
Example and comment:
Creating the historical scene with special vocabulary
Noel Streatfield’s novel, When the Siren Wailed evokes the atmosphere of a worn-torn London in 1939-45 with its horrible confusion, tragedy and destruction. She uses the vocabulary familiar to anyone who lived in London in those years. She describes the blitz, the shelters, the air raids, the rest centre, the Shelter Marshall, the warden, the bunks, billeting, enemy aircraft, and evacuees. All the words were reality to those who lived in London at that time.
The descriptions of bombed areas evoke the devastation: the children travelling on the bus ‘were chilled into silence by what they saw’, ‘felt a sort of hollowness inside them’, ‘all the spaces where houses had been’, the acres of tarpaulins covering broken roofs’, ‘the muslin in place of glass in hundreds of windows’, ‘the terrifying spaces where streets and houses had once been’ , ‘the sinister-looking barrage balloons’, ‘the number of arrows pointing the way to shelters’. When the children arrive at the top of their street, they find ‘just a large open space covered in rubble.’
The natural cheerfulness of the London Eastenders is depicted as changed into ‘private jokes’ only understood by those who have lived through the blitz.
Example:
Creating the historical using special artefacts and skills
Pressed against the ropes a few yards away was Jack, his eyes on the two bowmen. He was one of the few there were who noticed and spat. But Sir John had noticed too, and his sharp-featured and intelligent face was intent as he watched Hugh.
Hugh picked up his next shaft, glanced for a brief moment at the cock feather,
put it to the string, and then waited for his first shaft to fall. He
saw it swoop down and there were the feathers quivering at the very top of
the target. He grinned. He had not expected such luck for that
first cast. He drew again, lowering his aim a fraction and loosed. There
was no pause this time. He nocked immediately and began to draw, and
then in rapid succession he went through his drill. The bowmen who were
watching gasped and nudged each other. They might not be master bowmen, but
they knew what years of hard and patient practice were needed to attain such
an effortless skill. The great bow that Watkyn had made, bent and straightened;
the tough Flemish string twanged exultantly, and hurled a steady stream of
shafts away, an unending and graceful curve, up into the blue sky and the white
clouds that drifted overhead, pausing for a moment, it seemed, at the highest
point, and then curving down again towards the tall bale of straw.
(Welch,
R. Bowman of Crecy, p.59.)
Analysis and comment:
The words in italics above relate to the skill and practice of archery as known to the ‘bowmen’ of fourteenth century England. The hero of this story, Hugh Fletcher, is a bowman, an attribute which belongs to many Englishmen of his times. This passage shows how Hugh stood out from his peers in the skill he had developed. Welch has Hugh using the famous English longbow which brought victory to the English in their battles on French soil. Hugh, in the story, becomes the great hero of the battle of Crecy in which the English were victorious. The actions of Hugh in this excerpt and the flight of the arrows are typical of the accomplished English bowmen. So Welch has achieved an authentic moment that helps in creating that particular historical period.
No less in the modern novel of realism the writer has also to include/use speech/vocabulary of the day and of particular social groups of the characters, for example, teenagers, workers in a factory or place of business, children on the playground and so on. Again the authenticity of this kind of novel rests on the writer’s ability to paint a modern day scene with its typical clothing, activities, artEfacts, technologies, furniture and equipment, style of buildings and transport.
Example:
Creating realism in the modern novel
The cult of peer pressure is portrayed in Ruth Starke’s Nips X1 with the use of typical language of the young.
Page 76
Akram had worn all the wrong stuff, as usual. The trouble was, when he looked at himself at home he looked okay. When he got with others he knew he was a loser.
Today, for instance. His T-shirt had stripes. Mistake. Nobody over five wore stripes, he knew that now. His mother had made him wear a singlet under it and it had been plainly visible whenever he’d raised his arms. Even bigger mistake. His trainers didn’t have a red star on the side (mistake), his track pants were blue instead of black or grey (mistake) and the Snoopy socks probably hadn’t been a good idea.
Those blond guys had looked cool. They were total jerks, of course, but Akram had noticed that people who wore all the right gear often were. Or perhaps they just behaved that way to people like him who didn’t.
Analysis and comment:
Starke makes the reader very aware of Akram’s painful problem of not fitting in at school with the dominant group, and feeling culturally alienated because of his Asian origins. She has evoked through distinct language usage, the torture that a young misfit feels in today’s Australian society, especially in Akram’s case. Akram recognises four big mistakes in his dress today which isolate him from his peer group. He has worn ‘the wrong stuff’ – his striped T-shirt instead of a plain one, a singlet underneath it, ‘blue’ instead of ‘black or grey’ track pants, trainers without the ‘red star’ and ‘Snoopy socks’. All the items listed: plain T-shirt without a singlet underneath, track pants, trainers and socks are the current ‘trade-mark’ for being accepted, and yet there is more.
Dressing correctly is one criterion but also hair colour and demeanour. Starke has Akram describe the in-group as ‘blonde guys’ who ‘had looked cool’, two characteristics of those who are definitely “in” and in control. He does, however, describe them as ‘total jerks’, inferring his contempt for them but yet yearning to be accepted by them. He knew they were nothing but fools, so empty of real ideas, real substance, but he was willing to accept them because he had to belong. He feels the stigma of being different from them and being treated differently, not part of the “in-crowd”. So Starke has pinpointed Akram’s alienation with the help of vocabulary fashionable to the young and descriptive of their dress code and behaviour.
In the novel of fantasy, one can see that the writer is creating characters with realistic traits and reactions and often, in realistic settings, by using special vocabulary associated with the fantastic and magical. Therefore, the evocation of the fantastic or magical depends on the writer’s ability to make a careful selection of this specialised vocabulary.
Example:
Creating the fantastic in the novel of fantasy
Below is an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, p.53
‘What’s it all about then?’ said Scrubb.
‘It’s only this,’ said Glimfeather. ‘That if the Lord Regent, the Dwarf Trumpkin,
hears you are going to look for the lost Prince, he won’t let you start. He’d
keep you under lock and key sooner.’
‘Great Scott!’ said Scrubb, ‘You don’t mean that Trumpkin is a traitor? I used to hear a lot about him in the old days, at sea. Caspian – the King – I mean – trusted him absolutely.’
‘Oh no,’ said a voice. “Trumpkin’s no traitor. But more than thirty champions (knights, centaurs, good giants, and all sorts) have at one time or another set out to look for the lost Prince, and none of them has ever come back. And at last the King said he was not going to have all the bravest Narnians destroyed in the search for his son. And now nobody is allowed to go.’
‘But surely he’d let us go,’ said Scrubb. ‘When he knew who I was and who had sent me.’
(‘Sent both of us,’ put in Jill.)
‘Yes,’ said Glimfeather, ‘I think, very likely, he would. But the King’s away. And Trumpkin will stick to the rules. He’s as true as steel, but he’s deaf as a post and very peppery. You could never make him see that this might be the time for making an exception to the rule.’
Analysis and comment:
Lewis has titled this chapter, A Parliament of Owls. The two main characters, Scrubb and Jill, two English children, have been brought secretly by one of the owls to an old tower where all the owls congregate. The exchange of language during the discussion between the owls and the two humans is a normal exchange of ideas on the plight of those who have gone seeking for the missing Prince. Their language is that of the educated and Scrubb’s outburst of “Great Scott!’ typical of his class. There are realistic reactions on both sides, with the owls and with the humans. The reader accepts the talking, thinking, intelligent owls, as it were, as part of human existence along with the mention of dwarf, knights, centaurs and good giants. All of these characters including the intelligent owls, place the conversation in another place, in another realm, that of fantasy and the imagination.
Using dialect in the novel
There are many, many novels that include dialect in the story to bring alive certain characters. Below is an excerpt from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, written in 1911, set in Yorkshire, England. This excerpt is a conversation
between Mary Lennox, a middle-class girl and Dickon, the son of a labourer who lives in the district. The two children have secretly worked on restoring a small, enclosed garden together and now want Mary’s cousin, Colin, an invalid and difficult child to manage, to be able to see it.
Pages 140-141.
“I’ve been wondering that myself. I’ve thought of it almost every time I’ve talked to him,” said Mary. “I’ve wondered if he could keep a secret and I’ve wondered if we could bring him here without anyone seeing us. I thought perhaps you could push his carriage. The doctor thought perhaps you could push his carriage. The doctor said he must have fresh air, and if he wants us to take him out, no one dare disobey him. He won’t go out for other people, and perhaps they will be glad if he will go out with us. He could order the gardeners to keep away so they wouldn’t find out.”
Dickon was thinking very hard as he scratched Captain’s back.
“It’d be good for him, I’ll warrant,” he said, “”Us’d not be thinkin’ he’d better never been born. Us’d be just two children watchin’ a garden grow, an’ he’d be another. Two lads an’ a little lass just lookin’ on at th’ springtime. I warrant it’d be better than doctor’s stuff.”
“He’s been lying in his room so long and he’s always been so afraid of his back that it has made him queer,” said Mary. “He knows a good many things out of books, but he doesn’t know anything else. He says he has been too ill to notice things, and he hates going out of doors and hates gardens and gardeners. But he likes to hear about this garden because it is a secret. I daren’t tell him much, but he said he wanted to see it.”
“Us’ll have him out here some time for sure,” said Dickon. “I could push his carriage well enough. Has tha’ noticed how th’ robin an’ his mate has been workin’ while we’ve been sittin’ here? Look at him perched on that branch wonderin’ where it’d be best to put that twig he’s got in his beak.”
Analysis and comment:
On reading this passage, one is immediately struck by the difference in speech patterns and language usage between Mary Lennox and Dickon and, although the two have achieved a strong friendship, one perceives a social difference which both tend to ignore. Mary, in her correct English usage refers to herself as ‘I’ and uses her tenses and syntax correctly. Dickon, on the other hand, refers to himself and Mary as the subject of the sentence as “Us”, not “We” and he omits what to him seems unnecessary wordage, keeping expressions more personal, for example, “…he’d better never been born”, instead of the more impersonal, “it would have been better” followed by the grammatical and syntactic correctness of “ that he had never been born.” Notice how he speaks to Mary as “tha” instead of “you” and how he consistently omits the final “g” in words ending in “ing”. He refers to ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ as ‘lads’ and ‘lassies’.
Burnett, through the contrasting speech patterns, draws a clear picture of the two children and the social distance between them. There is an earthiness, naturalness and consistent rhythm about Dickon’s language that Mary lacks in her stilted, educated, grammatically correct speech. In the story Burnett depicts a typical north English country manor house of the early part of the twentieth century, with its inmates – servants and family – and their positions and relationships. She faithfully reproduces speech and duties typical of both classes, and the deference afforded to the educated and privileged.