{"title":"Variation in fictional dialogue in A Series of Unfortunate Events","authors":"Daniel Duncan","doi":"10.1177/09639470251327730","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The study of linguistic variation in fiction often concerns the use of dialect features as a tool for characterization; however, its use in situating the author in the construction of the text is less remarked upon. This paper considers both of these uses by examining Lemony Snicket’s usage of four sociolinguistic variables in <jats:italic>A Series of Unfortunate Events</jats:italic> . <jats:italic>ASOUE</jats:italic> is of particular interest because it is metafictional, yet as a work of children’s literature has a didactic role in teaching its audience the importance of being well-read. I show that depending on the variable, variation in the dialogue may involve reflection of the author’s language-internal constraints, adherence to a prescriptive norm, or style shifting to distinguish protagonists and antagonists from one another. I argue that these three patterns of variability help to position Snicket as a character within the metafictional series while demonstrating ‘correct’ language usage to readers.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":"91 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language and Literature","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251327730","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The study of linguistic variation in fiction often concerns the use of dialect features as a tool for characterization; however, its use in situating the author in the construction of the text is less remarked upon. This paper considers both of these uses by examining Lemony Snicket’s usage of four sociolinguistic variables in A Series of Unfortunate Events . ASOUE is of particular interest because it is metafictional, yet as a work of children’s literature has a didactic role in teaching its audience the importance of being well-read. I show that depending on the variable, variation in the dialogue may involve reflection of the author’s language-internal constraints, adherence to a prescriptive norm, or style shifting to distinguish protagonists and antagonists from one another. I argue that these three patterns of variability help to position Snicket as a character within the metafictional series while demonstrating ‘correct’ language usage to readers.
期刊介绍:
Language and Literature is an invaluable international peer-reviewed journal that covers the latest research in stylistics, defined as the study of style in literary and non-literary language. We publish theoretical, empirical and experimental research that aims to make a contribution to our understanding of style and its effects on readers. Topics covered by the journal include (but are not limited to) the following: the stylistic analysis of literary and non-literary texts, cognitive approaches to text comprehension, corpus and computational stylistics, the stylistic investigation of multimodal texts, pedagogical stylistics, the reading process, software development for stylistics, and real-world applications for stylistic analysis. We welcome articles that investigate the relationship between stylistics and other areas of linguistics, such as text linguistics, sociolinguistics and translation studies. We also encourage interdisciplinary submissions that explore the connections between stylistics and such cognate subjects and disciplines as psychology, literary studies, narratology, computer science and neuroscience. Language and Literature is essential reading for academics, teachers and students working in stylistics and related areas of language and literary studies.