Stylistic variation

The term ‘style’ is used to denote a specific way in which something is done. We can talk about a specific way of cooking, building, dressing, walking, speaking, etc. In creative writing, writers have a specific way of presenting, for example, their characters or the plot of the story which makes their writings different from other writers’. So we can say that this writer’s style of writing is different from the other writer’s style based on the specific way in which both writers present their views. The world is full of social styles; style is characteristically part of man, and thus has a social meaning (Coupland, 2007). In speech, for example, every speaker, including children, is capable of speaking differently in different speaking situations. For Romaine (1998), style is a speaker’s situational adjustments in the use of individual variables; it is the way a speaker combines variables to create distinctive ways of speaking which is key to projecting a particular identity. She believes that speaking in a specific way at a particular occasion has a social implication for the speaker.

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Style in variation studies is generally regarded as a means in which individuals express their social class. Style according to Coupland (2007: 5) is ‘a re-voicing of one’s social class or a re-ordering of the same linguistic feature in different speaking contexts which distinguishes social groups’. The kind of social class one belongs becomes obvious when they speak carefully, that is, one’s true accent determines their class and is manifested in careful speech. A particular accent can be tagged a low-class speech or uneducated speech, and usually a low-class speech is equated to casual speech.

However, all speakers consciously shift their speech patterns towards a standard or prestige variety in a more self-conscious careful style. A typical example of this is the study by Milroy and Gordon (2003) in Bradford, where many speakers, irrespective of their social class, shifted towards the standard form [ð] of the th variable in reading tasks (formal style), instead of their normal realisation of the nonstandard voiced stop variant /d/ in casual speech. Giles and Coupland (1991) are however of the view that, speakers do not only modify their speech in conscious situations to signal class, they do adjust their speech to express solidarity with, or distance themselves from an interlocutor; it is therefore a loss or gain situation.

Stylistic variation is, therefore, more of an intra-speaker variation (variation within a single speaker) rather than inter-speaker variation (variation across groups of speakers) (Shelling-Estes, 2002; Coupland, 2007). It is unlike class variation where the distinction is between two different classes: lower and higher classes, or between different age groups: lower, middle and upper age. Intra-speaker variation or individual speaker variation can involve several different types of variations. It can include shifts at the usage level for features associated with particular groups of speakers; dialects, or with a particular situation of use called registers (Crystal, 1991; Halliday, 1978).

A dialect-based variation may involve a higher usage level of, for instance, the r-lessness feature such as in ‘farm’ [fa:m], which may be associated with traditional Southern American speech (Cheshire, 2004). But a register-based variation would involve a speaker using the informal variant [e] more than the formal variant [ ː] of the NURSE vowel when talking with a family relation or a friend. Individual variation could also involve a shift within the same language or across different languages.

Within a single language, a lawyer might switch into a legalese register to discuss a

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case with his colleague lawyer, or a preacher switching into a sermon genre when on the pulpit for a sermon (Bucholtz, 1999; Cutler, 1999). It may also involve a shift from one language to another. Shifting into and out of different language varieties, as argued, may be deliberate, and may involve a conscious use of features that are known to both parties in a conversation. Cheshire (2004), however, notes that shifting into and out of different language varieties could be unconscious involving features that speakers do not even realise they are using. It is important we recognise that style shifting does not always involve single individual speakers, it can involve a whole group where a particular style becomes characteristic of a group (i.e. group style). Thus, we can have a male style or female style; youth style or adult style and so on. Again, individual variation can operate at any level of language use; from phonological level, to morphosyntatic, to lexical, to semantic, to pragmatic, and to discourse level, so that one can talk about a formal style of a particular syntactic feature, or an informal style of that feature (Tannen, 1984).

Labov’s (1972a) approach to style is, however, quite different. He thinks that style can be viewed as a continuum along which speech varies; it can be rated along a scale based on the amount of attention people pay to their speech when they speak. We can talk of vernacular or free speech versus careful speech. Vernacular or free speech, according to Labov (1972a), is a speaking style in which ‘minimal’ attention is paid to speech, while careful speech is a type which has various degrees of formality defined in terms of self-monitoring: passage reading, reading of minimal pairs and word-list (Labov, 1972a). Labov maintains that the language variety one acquires first before any other variety is vernacular. And it is the style used when a speaker is less conscious of his or her speech. This means that everyone has a vernacular speech, but as one grows to join a particular class, one either drops it or maintains it depending on their new class.

So, everybody, irrespective of their social standing speaks vernacular. For instance, when people are relaxed, tired or speaking with friends, or in informal contexts they use their everyday vernacular speech (Labov, 1966 cited in Coupland, 2007: 7). Labov associates vernacular speech to a working-class speech, though he agrees that all speakers consciously shift their speech towards a standard prestige variety when they are more self-conscious of their speech. In his social stratification of New York English, Labov observed that all speakers, regardless of their social status, consciously shifted

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their pronunciation towards the standard when reading a list of words that forces a speaker to focus attention to their pronunciation.

On a scale of style shift, Labov argues that there is always a rise in the use of variables in frequency from vernacular to standard as the style of speech increases from casual to more formal. Speakers change their speech towards a standard speech in a more formal context when they are monitoring their speech (Labov, 1966). Trudgill (1974) observed a similar situation where although each class had different average scores, all the speakers shifted their style in the same direction in a more formal speech style towards the standard language. This implies that awareness of the standard overt prestige speech can make speakers shift towards it in more formal styles.

It is obvious from the discussion that in speech speakers are highly creative and careful in their use of stylistic resources; they do not shift their style merely to react to speaking situations, but do this skilfully to achieve a purpose. More importantly, intra-speaker variation is pervasive, it cuts across all languages and cultures. The most efficient and appropriate means of determining the speech patterns of speakers in a speech community is, therefore, to examine the speakers’ speech along a continuum, to determine which variable is used, and in what contexts. However, the present study focuses on only formal context, where speakers pay attention and monitor their speech.

Thus, any speech form observed in this study will be considered as the speakers’ most formal speech only.