Style in texts

A. What are the linguistic features that determine "style"?

1. Topic

2. Lexical

   1. What has higher frequency here vs elsewhere? (cf. LDS General Conference)

   2. Word choices (pro-life, anti-abortion, pro-abortion, pro-choice; pure/clean; hard/difficult)

   3. Figurative language (metaphor, analogy)

   4. Latinate vocabulary

   5. Words for hot-button issues

   6. Choice of words

   7. lexical relations in political discourse

3. Morphological

   1. Average length of words

   2. Derivational morphemes (-ization, -icity, etc)

4. Grammatical

   1. Number of words per sentence

   2. Punctuation (run-ons with semicolons, exclamation points, etc)

   3. Parts of speech (noun-heavy vs verb-heavy)

   4. Embedded clauses (e.g. relative clauses)

   5. Fronting and clefting

   6. Stance / modals

   7. Passive

   8. Present / past

   9. Imperatives

B. Examples

1. General overview

2. Nice comparison of three different styles for same text (see bottom of page)

3. Hemingway vs Faulkner

4. Measuring stylistics statistically

C. Genres

1. Poetry (example)

2. Legal: parody

3. Advertising: Sites: 1 2

4. General Conference talks: 1 vs 2

E. Parody / satire / humor

1. Linguistic humor (More)

2. Broadsheet (B) vs tabloid (T) vs satire/parody (S)

3. Ads - parody: 1 2 3 4 5

Texts to analyze for Monday