Style

Formelt sprog:
Brug af fremmedord (svære ord og ord af latinsk oprindelse)
Brug af abstrakte ord, f.eks. "demokrati"
Lange sætninger
Mange indskudte led
Over- og underordnelsesforhold mellem leddene (hypotakse), hvor der angives årsags- og betingelsesforhold
Brug af varierede adjektiver og  adverbier
Adjektiver bruges til at "kvalificere" (sige noget om) personer og steder
Adverbier bruges til at "kvalificere" adjektiver, hvad der gør sproget mere varieret
Bevidst brug af modalverber
Bevidst brug af udvidet og simpel tid
Brug af ing-former, hvor man på dansk bruger bisætninger
Der kan ofte være brug af passiv: The letter was written, hvor det ikke fremgår, hvem der er agens (den handlende)

Uformelt sprog
Konkrete ord
Korte sætninger
Sideordnede sætninger (paraktakse)
Forholdsvis simple adjektiver og adverbier
Adjektiver "kvalificeres" i mindre grad af adverbier
"Talesprogsudtryk" og slang
Ufuldendte sætninger
I højere grad brug af aktive sætningskonstruktioner: Peter wrote the letter

Nogle eksempler

Tiger Woods was at the centre of yet another crisis yesterday after his mother-in-law was taken to hospital in the middle of the night.
In the latest dramatic twist, Barbro Holmberg, 57, is believed to have fallen ill after confronting the billionaire golfer over claims that he cheated on her daughter with a string of mistresses. .......It is believed Mrs Holmberg suffered an anxiety attack after confronting Woods' over the affair claims ........
The golfer was said to have been struggling to breathe .......
It was claimed last night that Nordegren, the mother of Woods' two young children, had moved out of the property to a nearby house. However neighbour Jarius Adams denied the reports, insisting: 'She is still here
'. (fremhævede ord til brug i analysen)


Det vrimler med passivformer, hvor agens er væk: "Is reported to"... o.lign. Der fortolkes frit fra politirapporten om Woods' bil-crash, hvor passivformen igen bruges: The witness is understood to be Woods' wife, who handed over two bottles of Vicatin, a painkiller, and sleeping pill Ambien, after the accident. (Daily Mail, 9.12.09)

En sidehistorie er sponsorers hæmningsløse brug af ham.

The 34-year-old club promoter allegedly claimed Woods pursued her for four months before they got involved and was very 'possessive' and 'jealous'.
Rumours also persist linking Woods with a well-known female British TV presenter, whom he is claimed to have met on his frequent visits to the UK
.

Der er igen brug af passiv-formen - uden agens - "is claimed to have met". Der er ikke angivet en kilde. Her bliver diskret og insinuerende lavet et mindre karaktermord på "tigeren". Ikke alene tillader han sig at bryde ægteskabets love, men han er oven i købet "possessive" og "jealous". At sådanne udsagn måske kan fortolkes som den nu forsmåede elskerindes efterrationalisering af et forhold, der har efterladt en formodentlig bitter eftersmag, gøres der ikke noget ud af.

Teksters og mediebudskabers grad af formalitet i sproget bestemmes ofte af, hvad der er målgruppen for budskabet, jvf sender-modtagermodellen i kommunikationsanalysen:

Eksempler:

Text 1: Excerpt from The Sun diet page April 20th 2009:

A GIRLIE holiday in the sun was all it took to make Claire Jones realise it was time to tone up.
The 33-year-old dental nurse, says: "I had always been slim as a teenager and in my twenties but I began to put on a bit.
"It wasn't until I went on holiday with my girlfriends at the end of last summer that I realised just how big I'd got."
Claire, from Chafford Hundred in Essex, continues: "We were in Marbella in Spain where it was really glamorous.
"Round the pool in our bikinis it was pretty obvious I was the fattest in the group and I just felt awful.
"I resolved there and then that when I was next lying by a pool I'd be fit and healthy and looking good again.
"I'm 5ft 5in and went from 12st and a size 14-16 to 9st and size 10. "I'm now ready for the beach in Goa when I go on my summer hols with my mum."

Text 2: The Economist 26.02.09 on social inequality:

Within the rich world, where destitution is rare, countries where incomes are more evenly distributed have longer-lived citizens and lower rates of obesity, delinquency, depression and teenage pregnancy than richer countries where wealth is more concentrated. Studies of British civil servants find that senior ones enjoy better health than their immediate subordinates, who in turn do better than those further down the ladder.
And the evidence is that the differences in status cause these “gradients”. Low-caste Indian children do worse on cognitive tests if they must state their identities beforehand. High-status baboons bred in captivity show elevated levels of stress hormones and become ill more often when they are moved to groups where they no longer dominate.

What makes the difference between the two texts? Analyze them in terms of:
Style:
Vocabulary (choice of words):
Nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs.
Is the vocabulary specific?
- abstractness/concreteness of words
- words of Latin origin
- How are adjectives and adverbs used differently for different effect?
Sentence structure
- Length of sentences
and their internal structure:.
- Parataxis ( Parataxe - sideordnede led) and hypotaxis (hypotaxe - underordnede led)
Figures of Speech (talemåder), f.eks. “girlie holiday”.
Are idioms used
?

Hypotakse: He had to study hard, because he was behind with his homework (den ene sætning underordnet den anden. Årsagsrelation)
Paratakse: John drank whisky. Oliver drank beer (sideordnede sætninger)

Find paratakse og hypotakse i teksterne herunder:
At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting.

Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row Uncle George.

The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oarlocks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his father's arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat moved further ahead in the mist all the time. (....)

Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up on the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars. (Hemingway:
Indian Camp)
Now, it will take about four years to implement this entire plan – because we need to do it responsibly and we need to get it right. That means that health care costs won’t go down overnight. But we have built into the law all sorts of measures to assure that in years to come, health care inflation, which has been rising about three times as fast as people’s wages, will start slowing. We’ll start reducing the waste in the system, from unnecessary tests to unwarranted insurance subsidies. So over time, Americans will save money.

Meanwhile, there are a set of reforms that will take effect this year (....)

Last year their premiums went up 35%, which made it a lot harder for them to offer the same coverage. On Tuesday, I was joined at the bill signing by Ryan Smith, who runs a small business with five employees (Pres. Obama tale om Health reform 25.3.10. Gazette Online)

Ex: Klassesprog/sociolekt

Social Dialect (”Lowbrow”)

(”Middle Highbrow”)

I ain't done nothin’
I done it yesterday
I didn't do nothin’
Look at them people
He can do it hisself
They drunk beer themself

I haven't done anything
I did it yesterday
I didn't do anything
Look at those people
He can do it himself
They themselves drank beer

' Blackbird' (the wurzels)
…..Alright! Underneath the open sky
in spring we loves to dine.
We likes to 'ear the flappin'
of the missus' washin' line
We listens to a tuneful song,
a blackbird or a tit,
But on me vest and underpants
he scored a direct hit Where be a blackbird to?
I know where he be
He be up yon Wurzel tree and I be after 'ee
Now I sees 'ee and 'ee sees I …..
(Bristol sociolect)

The Avenue (Muld.)
Now that we've come to the end
I've been trying to piece it together,
Not that distance makes anything clearer.
It began in the half-light
While we walked through the dawn chorus
After a party that lasted all night,
With the blackbird, the wood-pigeon,
The song-thrush taking a bludgeon
To a snail, our taking each other's hand
As if the whole world lay before us.


Target group analysis

Different target groups influence how the message is coined. Readers of The Economist belong to high social strata, readers of the Sun to low strata. This affects the angling (vinkling) of the message.

Text 3: Michelle Obama tale til Democratic National Convention 2008:

I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend.

I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.

I come here as a Mom whose girls are the heart of my heart and the center of my world - they're the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night. Their future - and all our children's future - is my stake in this election.

And I come here as a daughter - raised on the South Side of Chicago by a father who was a blue collar city worker, and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me. My mother's love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, and her intelligence reflected in my own daughters
(full speech).

Text 4: Barack Obama tale til American Medical Association 2009:

Make no mistake: the cost of our health care is a threat to our economy. It is an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It is a ticking time-bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America.

It is unsustainable for Americans like Laura Klitzka, a young mother I met in Wisconsin last week, who has learned that the breast cancer she thought she'd beaten had spread to her bones; who is now being forced to spend time worrying about how to cover the $50,000 in medical debts she has already accumulated, when all she wants to do is spend time with her two children and focus on getting well. These are not worries a woman like Laura should have to face in a nation as wealthy as ours.

Stories like Laura's are being told by women and men all across this country – by families who have seen out-of-pocket costs soar, and premiums double over the last decade at a rate three times faster than wages. This is forcing Americans of all ages to go without the checkups or prescriptions they need. It's creating a situation where a single illness can wipe out a lifetime of savings.

TASK: Show how different target groups influence the coining of the two messages above. What kinds of metaphors/figurative speech do they use?

Note: Figurative speech (billedlig tale), e.g. Metaphors: “down the ladder” (low social status), “My Dad was our rock” (Michelle Obama).


EXERCISES

Characterise the famous Egyptian blogger The Sandmonkey's style:

The majority of taxis in Egypt are cars that are at least 15 years old, which means that they were purchased at a time when seatbelts were considered to be a luxury item in your car, you know, along with power-steering, and air-conditioning. If you can get one of them to stop for you and get you where you want to go (most of them won't), you will experience the ride of a lifetime: The seats are uncomfortable, the space is small, prayers and CD’s hanging next to each other from the rearview mirror, the windows have no handles. Ohh, and the decoration, we can’t forget the decoration. Nothing like a blue strobe light on top of your head, alongside the ice-cream truck tune that the driver set up so it starts every time he hits on the breaks to make your ride fun. And the ride is fun, you know, in an adrenaline-rush-oh-my-god-I-am gonna-die kind of way. The driving is   –  of course  -  horrible, and the driver will almost   always  choose the longest, most traffic packed route he could possibly take. It’s as if he wants you to suffer the discomfort of sitting in his car for the longest time possible.

But see, he doesn’t stop there. He starts to talk to you about the most useless
topics (“The Mossad is financing Ruby. She is part of a Zionist conspiracy to make our youth horny and not pray!”), and you feel rude if you don’t converse back or at least nod your head. And if you just keep your mouth shut, the driver will start to punish you by turning the music/the Koran/the latest Amr Khaled tape louder. And if the Koran is playing you don’t dare to tell him to mute it or lower the volume, even if you have a headache, cause how is it possible that recitation of the Koran by some girly-voiced guy that is magnified and distorted horribly at the same time through the driver’s 1970’s speaker system contribute to your headache? Nonsense. But then the driver will start cursing the other drivers with the filthiest insults, while the Koran is playing, and you wonder why the guy has it on if he has such low respect to it. But alas, you just shake your head and let it slide, hoping the ride to be over soon.

I hate Taxis in Egypt.

Source: The Sandmonkey (Not all adj/adv forms have been marked)

Mossad: The Israeli secret intelligence service
Ruby: A daring Egyptian pop singer

Examine and characterise the different styles of the following texts:

1.

President Bush is married to Laura Welch Bush, a former teacher and librarian, and they have 19-year-old twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. The Bush family also includes their two dogs, Spot and Barney, and a cat, India. Mrs. Bush promotes the arts, and enjoyed showcasing (udstille) the works of Texas artists at the Governor's Mansion in Austin. She hopes to find ways to spotlight artistic works in Washington, D.C. Laura and George W. Bush were married in Midland in 1977. They are the proud parents of twin girls, Barbara and Jenna, who were born in 1981 and are named after their grandmothers. (The White House Presentation of the Bush Family. www.Whitehouse.gov)

2.

"Home is important. It's important to have a home."—Crawford, Texas, Feb. 18, 2001

"It's good to see so many friends here in the Rose Garden. This is our first event in this beautiful spot, and it's appropriate we talk about policy that will affect people's lives in a positive way in such a beautiful, beautiful part of our national—really, our national park system, my guess is you would want to call it."—Washington, D.C., Feb. 8, 2001

"We're concerned about AIDS inside our White House—make no mistake about it."—Washington, D.C., Feb. 7, 2001