January 29, 2003

More on style features

Some phonological features of style, borrowed from literary theory and poetics:

• Alliteration: two or more words begin with the same letter or sound: "play, passion, partnering".
• Assonance: two or more words contain the same vowel letter or sound: "risk, bliss" in "Take a risk and find your bliss".
• Rhyme: last part (vowel+consonant) of last syllable is pronounced the same: "you're sweet, we meet, I treat!"

Parallelism: repeated elements in a list structure.

All the above style features can be considered "phonological paralellism", since they involve repetition of sounds. We also find syntactic parallelism, where the same sentence pattern is repeated:

• "Thinking less, feeling more. Doing less, being more. Fearing less, loving more."

This example also involves lexical parallelism: repetition of the same word ("less/more").

Style and non-propositional meaning

There are two senses of meaning which it would be useful to differentiate:

Propositional meaning makes an assertion about the world. A proposition has a "truth value" (i.e. it can be true or false). Only some uses of language convey propositions:

• complete sentences with a verb (not plain noun phrases, adjectives etc.)
• declarative sentences (not questions or commands)

Non-propositional meaning conveys something without asserting it. Attitudes, feelings, opinions fall into this category. Anything that isn't a proposition doesn't have a "truth value" and can't be assessed as true or false.

Metaphors (and other kinds of figurative language) can also be used to convey non-propositional meanings, since they aren't supposed to be taken literally. "Our photocopier is turbo-charged!"

Incomplete ideas: "Bigger! Better!" (than what?); "New!" (newer than what?); "Natural!" (in most cases, not well-defined)

Images, colors, fonts, music and other non-linguistic elements also don't function propositionally.

Styles in general convey non-propositional meanings, since "truth in advertising" laws make it highly desirable for advertisers to avoid making explict statements that could be true or false.

Some more examples

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