23. Represented speech

Represented speech is the use of speech of a character as if it were the author’s speech. There are two types of represented speech: uttered and unuttered.

The uttered represented speech is the speech of a character in the author’s words: To horse! To horse! He quits, forever quits.// A scene of peace… (George Gordon Byron; 22 January 1788, London, England, Great Britain – 19 April 1824, Missolonghi, Aetolia-Acarnania, Ottoman Empire).

The unuttered represented speech represents the thoughts and feelings of a character: An idea has occurred to Soames. His cousin Joylon was Irene’s trustee, the first step would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill (“The Foresyte Saga” by John Galsworthy; 14 August 1867, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England – 31 January 1933, London, England).

24. Parts of speech and their stylistic potential Parts of Speech and Their Stylistic Potential

The article may be a very expressive element of narration especially when used with proper names. For example, the indefinite article may convey evaluative connotations when used with a proper name: I’m a Marlowe by birth, and we are a hot-blooded family (from “The Third Twin” by Ken Follett; born 5 June 1949, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom). It may be charged with a negative evaluative connotation and diminish the importance of someone’s personality, make it sound insignificant: A Forsyte is not an uncommon animal (John Galsworthy).

The definite article used with a proper name may become a powerful expressive means to emphasize the person’s good or bad qualities: You are not the Andrew Manson I married (from “The Citadel” by Archibald Joseph Cronin; 19 July 1896, Cardross, Scotland – 6 January 1981, Montreux, Switzerland).

The definite article in the following example serves as an intensifier of the epithet used in the character’s description: My good fellow, I said suavely, what brings me here is this: I want to see the evening sun go down over the snow-tipped Sierra Nevada. Within the hour he had spread this all over the town and I was pointed out for the rest of my visit as the mad Englishman (Atkinson).

The definite article may contribute to the devices of gradation or help create the rhythm of the narration: But then he would lose Sondra, his connections here, and his uncle – this world! The loss! The loss! The loss! (Theodor Dreiser; August 27, 1871, Terre Haute, Indiana – December 28, 1945, Hollywood, California).

No article or its omission before a common noun conveys a maximum level of abstraction, generalization: The postmaster and postmistress, husband and wife, looked carefully at every piece of mail (from “The Beet Queen” by Louise Erdrich; born June 7, 1954, Little Falls, Minnesota, United States).

The stylistic functions of the pronoun also depend on the disparity between the traditional and contextual (situational) meanings.

So, personal pronouns we, you, they and others can be employed in the meaning different from their dictionary meaning. For example, the pronoun we that means “speaking together or on behalf of other people” can be used with reference to a single person, the speaker, and is called the plural of majesty: And for that offence immediately do we exile him hence (William Shakespeare).

The plural of modesty, or the author’s we, is used with the purpose to identify oneself with the audience or society at large: My poor dear child, cried Miss Crawly, is our passion unrequited then? (William Makepeace Thackeray).

The pronoun you is often used as an intensifier in an expressive address or imperative: Just you go in and win (Evelyn Waugh).

Such pronouns as one, you, we have two major connotations: that of identification of the speaker and the audience and generalization (contrary to the individual meaning).

The pronoun I employed by the author as a means of speech characterization testifies to the speaker’s complacency and egomania when overused, while you or one used in reference to oneself characterize the speaker as a reserved, self-controlled person: - You can always build another image for yourself to fall in love with. – No, you can’t. That's the trouble, you lose the capacity for building. You run short of the stuff that creates beautiful illusions (from “Dangerous Corner” by John Boynton Priestly; 13 September 1894, Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England – 14 August 1984, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England).

Demonstrative pronouns may greatly enhance the expressive coloring of the utterance: That wonderful girl! That beauty! That world of wealth and social position she lived in! (Jack London).

Pronouns are a powerful means to convey the atmosphere of informal or familiar communication or an attempt to achieve it: Claws in, you cat (Bernard Shaw).

Through the figurative use of the personal pronouns the author may achieve metaphorical images and even create sustained compositional metaphors.

The only grammatical category of the English adjective today is that of comparison. Comparison is only the property of qualitative and quantitative adjectives, but not of the relative ones. When adjectives that are not normally used in a comparative degree are used with this category they are charged with a strong expressive power: Mrs. Thompson, Old Man Fellow’s housekeeper, had found him deader than a doornail... (from “The Perfect Murder” by R. L. Mangum).

The commercial functional style makes a wide use of the violation of grammatical norms to captivate the reader’s attention: The orangemostest drink in the world.

The use of comparative or superlative forms with other parts of speech may also convey a humorous coloring: He was the most married man I’ve ever met (from “Three Centuries of English Prose” by Irina Arnold and Nina Diakonova; born 20 October 1915, Petrograd).

Another stylistic aspect of the adjective comes to the fore when an adjective gets substantivized and acquires the qualities of a noun: All Europe was in arms, and England would join. The impossible had happened (from “Death of a Hero” by Richard Aldington).

The stylistic function of the adjective is achieved through the deviant use of the degrees of comparison that results mostly in grammatical metaphors and sometimes the lexical ones. The same effect is also caused by the substantivized use of the adjectives.