Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

Idiolect
It a truism of modern linguistics that no two speakers use language in exactly the
same way. We all have our own linguistic mannerisms and stylistic idiosyncrasies,
and the term reserved for an individual’s special unique style is 
idiolect
.
Accents and dialects
Influenced and shaped by the regional origins and socioeconomic background of
their speakers, dialects are distinguished by patterns in grammar and vocabulary while
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accents are distinguished through patterns of pronunciation. The Standard English
dialect and the Received Pronunciation accent (see Table C2.1) represent jointly the
high-prestige varieties of British English, although these are far outnumbered (in
terms of numbers of speakers) by many non-standard regional varieties. Two further
points of special relevance to stylistic analysis are worth making here:
(i) It is popularly yet wrongly assumed that Standard English is not really a dialect at
all, but that this variety along with its high-prestige counterpart accent, RP, sim-
ply constitute ‘real’ English. A consequence of this is that when critics discuss the
representation of ‘dialect’ in literature – as in, say, the novels of Thomas Hardy –
they tend to be talking rather more narrowly about the regional, non-standard
dialects, often of a rural and particularly conservative type, which are used by 
particular fictional characters. But 
all
speech and writing is framed in a dialect of
some sort, whether it be standard or non-standard, high-prestige or low-status.
(ii) Given that accent is a variety of language defined through 
pronunciation
, it might
seem that the study of accent has no place in the stylistic analysis of written
literary discourse. However, writers make use of any number of often ingenious
techniques for representing features of spoken discourse in print. For example,
in the Irvine Welsh novel from which the passage used below is taken, the
nuances of spoken Edinburgh vernacular are captured through a variety of 
orthographic techniques:
a
Vowel lengthening, which is a characteristic of all varieties of Scots English,
is relayed by doubling the vowels in spelling, so that 
got
becomes ‘goat’, 
off
becomes ‘oaff ’ and so on.
b
A feature widespread in Scots English is an older style vowel pronunciation
which dates back to the time of Chaucer. Whereas most contemporary
British accents now have diphthongs in words like 
about
and 
down
, their
realisation in Scots is as long monophthongs, represented in spellings like
‘doon’ and ‘aboot’.
c
A particular feature of the low-status variety of Scots English targeted by
Welsh (a feature it shares, curiously, with London’s Cockney English) is ‘L-
vocalisation’. This involves the realisation of the /l/ sound as a vowel rather
than a liquid consonant, such that 
ball
becomes ‘baw’, 
always
‘eywis’, 
foot-
ball
‘fitba’ and so on.
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S T Y L E , R E G I S T E R A N D D I A L E C T
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Table C2.1
Standard and non-standard accents and dialects