LISTENING TO WRITING: a sociolinguistic enquiry into the creation of meaning and effect in modern American literature, focusing on the work of Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders.

This thesis proceeds in two modes, utilizing both a critical and a creative lens to think \nabout the use of simple language in formal writing. It examines the production of a \nregister that categorizes insider/outsider status (the mechanics) as well as interrogating \nthe (un)conscious attempts of authors seeking to prise into or remain removed from \nestablished cultural identity (the intention). It investigates the use of the vernacular and \nthe informal in American writing in general and how it is ultimately reflected and \nreworked through an autobiographical channel: an examination of voice, register, and \ncode-switching in my own writing. \n \nThe first section, ‘Listening to Writing,’ is a forensic analysis of Vonnegut and Saunders, \ntwo exemplars of literary informality in American writing. It seeks—employing the work \nof Sarangi, Milroy, Hunston & Thompson and others to pinpoint, at a microanalytical \nlevel, what makes the conversational conversational, and the sociolinguistic work of \nAustin (performativity), Giles, Coupland, and Gumperz (accommodation and identity), \nand Auer (code switching)—to investigate the authors’ specific manipulation of pitch and \nregister to create effect. It also appraises the historical and cultural imperative of the \nAmerican abhorrence of intellectualism and hence the disdain for high-flown language \nand how that is reflected in not only the literature but also the very social self-positioning \nof the authors. \n \nThe second section, ‘My Ice Age,’ is an autobiographical foray into outsider/insider, \nnormal/abnormal categories and boundaries, extending the investigation of voice and register as examined above to explore the complex nature of belonging and alienation, of \ncommunity and identity, from being a white boy in an Inuit settlement to being from an \nInuit settlement in Los Angeles to the complexities of belonging and alienation that arise \nfrom being gay. The juxtaposition of two different tones in ‘My Ice Age’ is used to \nreflect the juxtapositions of geographic and temporal otherness, the distance (formality) \nand increased vernacular in the Los Angeles sections reflecting a need to fit in, to forge a \nplace for myself both geographically and socially through the use of voice and register. \nBoth the critical and the creative lenses elucidate use of simple language and variations of \nregisters to create sociological bonds/alienation. Simple language—and humour—forges \ncommunion with reader. The adoption of the vernacular, therefore, has a purpose beyond \nmere stylistics, in that it also is used in a social and community building (or razing) way. \nIn other words, the use of informality becomes a performative speech act.

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