PROSE%20STYLES:%20TOUGH,%20SWEET%20AND%20STUFFY

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PROSE STYLESTOUGH, SWEET AND STUFFY

• by Don L. F. Nilsen

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POINT OF VIEW THE NOVEL THE AD THE TEXT
BOOK ETHOS PATHOS LOGOS TOUGH
SWEET STUFFY 1ST PERSON 2ND PERSON 3RD
PERSON SUBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE OBJECTIVE INFORMAL
INTIMATE FORMAL
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TOUGH LANGUAGE

• Tough language is the rhetoric of Frederic Henry
  in Ernest Hemingways Farewell to Arms
• In the late summer of that year we lived in a
  house in a village that looked across the river
  and the pain to the mountains. In the bed of the
  river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and
  white in the sun, and the water was clear and
  swiftly moving and blue in the channels.

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• It is the language of intimacy, the language of
  no pretentions. The words are simple and the
  grammar is simple.
• The writing is not planned, but just happens, in
  a stream of consciousness kind of wayyou are
  there.
• The sentences are short and choppy. If there is
  conjunction it is coordination, not
  subordination.
• It is the language of the loosened tie and the
  rolled up shirt sleeves, with no pretentious
  multi-syllable or low-frequency words.

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• Being egocentric, it is subjective, and whether
  it is written from the author participant or the
  author omniscient point of view, it is concerned
  with communicating peoples innermost feelings.
• Tough language is the language of fiction, and
  therefore the process of in medias res is
  totally appropriate to this styleIn the late
  summer of that year we lived in a house in a
  village that looked across the river and the
  plain to the mountain.

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SWEET LANGUAGE

• Sweet language is the language of advertisers.
  Walker Gibson calls this language AROMA
  (Advertising Rhetoric of Madison Avenue).
• Sweet language is listener-oriented in an attempt
  to seduce listeners into buying products they
  dont want or need.

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• It is language full of innovative spellings,
  creative grammar, and wild punctuation.
• Sweet writing contains many sentence fragments,
  and would rather flaunt a grammatical rule than
  conform to it Winston tastes good like a
  cigarette should. What do you want, good
  grammar, or good taste?

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• Sweet language is the language of sensationalism,
  the language of superlatives and hyperbole.
• It is the language of diversion it plays tricks
  on the reader with its puns, its word coinages,
  its humor, its packaging, its sex, and other
  aspects which have nothing to do with the product
  itself.
• It is informal, or sometimes even intimate or
  cutesy in tone.

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• Contractions, clippings, blendings, and deletions
  abound, making it all the more cryptic and
  intimate.
• Its full of slang expressions like no doubt
  about it, cut it out, and where else? It
  can be cutesy, as in Dry skin? Not me, darling.
  Every inch of little me is as smooth as (well,
  you know what).

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• Gibson says that a common kind of coinage in
  sweet language is the noun-adjunct construction
  (a noun modified by another noun).
• We see this kind of coinage in Speakerphone,
  Fooderama living, decorator colors, and
  Supermarket selection.
• The Bell Company praises the beauties of its
  hands-free, group-talk, across-the-room
  telephone.

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STUFFY LANGUAGE

• Where tough language is I-oriented, and sweet
  language is you-oriented, stuffy language is
  it-oriented.
• It is the language of laboratory experiments , of
  research papers and theses and dissertations and
  scholarly books, and academia in general.

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• Stuffy language is highly grammatical and highly
  formal.
• The syntax contains a great deal of
  subordination, and the sentences are frequently
  long and complex.
• Infinitives, gerunds, present and past
  participial constructions, nominative absolutes,
  perfect, progressive, and passive constructions
  are almost totally confined to this style of
  writing.

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• It is an impersonal style to the extent that
  first-person pronouns are seldom allowed. For
  this and other reasons, passive constructions and
  impersonal constructions with abstract subjects
  are common.
• Stuffy language is also the language of
  limitations, restrictions and qualifications
  because the writer doesnt want to make claims
  beyond the evidence.
• Limiting (as opposed to descriptive) adjectives
  are frequent, as are prepositional phrases and
  relative clauses.

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THE BIRMINGHAM RIOTSREPORTED IN THREE DIFFERENT
STYLES

• The police and firemen drove hundreds of rioting
  Negroes off the streets today with high pressure
  hoses and an armored car.
• (New York Times May 8, 1963)

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• Three times during the day, waves of shouting,
  rock-throwing Negroes had poured into the
  downtown business district, to be scattered and
  driven back by battering streams of water from
  high-pressure hoses and swinging clubs of
  policement and highway patrolmen.
• (New York Herald Tribune)

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• The blaze of bombs, the flash of blades, the
  eerie glow of fire, the keening cries of hatred,
  the wild dance of terror at nightall this was
  Birmingham, Alabama.
• (Time, May 7, 1963)

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SUMMARY OF WORD DEVELOPMENT THE NOVEL THE
AD THE TEXT BOOK COLLOQUIAL COLLOQUIAL FORMA
L SLANG CHARACTER SLANG AD NO
SLANG DEPENDENT
DEPENDENT MODALS GERUNDS INFIN
ITIVES PERFECTS PROGRESSIVES SPELLING
SPELLINGS SPELLINGS CHARACTERS CREATIVE
CORRECT ANGLO-SAXON ANGLO-SAXON INKHORN
TERMS WORDS WORDS GREEK LATIN
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SUMMARY OF SENTENCE DEVELOPMENT THE NOVEL THE
AD THE TEXT BOOK SHORT, CHOPPY LONG,
COMPLICATED FRAGMENTS PERFECT
GRAMMAR COMMA SPLICES SIMPLE SIMPLE LONG
COMPLEX RESTRICTIVE MODIFIER SIMPLE
SENTENCES COMPOUND COMPLEX
SENTENCES CASUAL PUNCTUATION PERFECT
PUNCTUATION RHETORICAL SENTENCES
DONT QUESTIONS MAKE CLAIMS
BEYOND IMPERATIVES EVIDENCE THEY,YOU,
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!SUMMARY OF PARAGRAPH AND DISCOURSE
DEVELOPMENT! THE NOVEL THE AD THE TEXT
BOOK STREAM OF CASUAL STRUCTURED CONSCIOUSNES
S INDUCTIVE WHATEVER DEDUCTIVE NOTE THE
NEWSPAPER IS SUPER DEDUCTIVE BECAUSE PEOPLE READ
HEADLINES AND MAYBE FIRST PARAGRAPH (WHO, WHAT,
WHEN, WHY, WHERE, HOW) AND LATER MATERIALS GET
BURIED OR CUT MUCH INUENDO INTIMATE
CUTESY CAUSAL AND IMPLICATION
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!!SUMMARY OF USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE THE
NOVEL THE AD THE TEXT BOOK AUTHOR
PARTICIPANT ? AUTHOR AUTHOR OBSERVANT OBSERVAN
T AUTHOR OMNISCIENT MAINLY TROPES MAINLY
SCHEMES LITERAL IN MEDIAS RES ALLITERATION
METAPHOR ASSONANCE IRONY RHYME POETIC
JUSTICE CUTESY TONE SIMILES ALLEGORIES
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!!!SUMMARY OF PUNCTUATION THE NOVEL THE
AD THE TEXT BOOK CREATIVE CREATIVE FORMAL
USE OF PUNCTUATION PUNCTUATION SEMI
COLONS PERIODS PARENTHESES DAS
HES HYPHENS RESTRICTIVE AND
NON-RESTRICTIVE CLAUSES PROPER
CAPITALIZATION USE OF ELIPSES
SIC BRACKETS, ETC.
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• References
• Barry, Anita K. English Grammar Language as
  Human Behavior, 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle River,
  NJ Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2002.
• Eschholz, Paul, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark.
  Language Awareness, 10th Edition. Bedford/St.
  Martins, 2009.
• Gibson, Walker. Tough, Sweet and Stuffy An Essay
  on Modern American Prose Styles. Westport, CT
  Greenwood Press, 1966.
• Nilsen, Alleen, and Alleen Pace Nilsen.
  Encyclopedia of 20th Century American Humor.
  Westport, CT Greenwood, 2000.