Style and literary standards

• All writers have a style, but not all styles are good.

• Whether a style is good or bad largely depends on whether it is appropriate to the work.

What does the style lend to the work as a whole?

Style should work with other elements to produce a final unity.

Style is the author's personal expression.

• It reveals his/her way of perceiving experience and organizing  perceptions.

• Style includes the author's choice of words as well as arrangement of words into phrases, sentences, and paragraphs.

Elements of style:  diction, imagery, and syntax

• Diction: the author's choice of words and their effect on the total work

Denotative meaning:  the literal meaning of a word

Connotative meaning:  suggestions and associations resulting from a word or group of words.

Several words may have the same denotation, while differing significantly in their connotation.

Is a writer's style basically denotative or connotative?

Imagery:  the evocation of a sensory experience through words.

• Literal images:  Suggest no change or extension in the meaning of a word; supply specific, concrete details.

• Figurative images, or figures of speech; similes and metaphors.

• Recurrent images:  Repetitions of the same or similar images throughout a work can reinforce an effect that the author is trying to create.

• Symbols:  The author's attempts to represent areas of human experience that ordinary language cannot express;  the symbol evokes a concrete, objective reality while suggesting a level of meaning beyond that reality

• Archetypal image:  concept of Carl Jung.  There are images and symbols that are universal, existing from one culture to another, that always have the same meaning.