Style Mapping

In the excerpt from Neil Gaiman's Stardust, the narrator's diction is literal, straightforward, and common. On the style map, the passage falls in the third quadrant. The narrator describes the houses of Wall with conversational, blunt language such as "square" and "old." Additionally, the narrator repeats common adjectives. For instance, another wall built of "square lumps" is also described as "old." In contrast to Stardust, the narrator of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian demonstrates a thorough understanding of sophisticated, picturesque language. Expressive adjectives such as "pinewood," "endless," "gnashing," "bitter," "hobbled," and "oblique" create rich description and depict the dark mood of the passage. Thus, the diction of Blood Meridian belongs in the first quadrant. Finally, the diction of the first page in John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent is in the fourth quadrant. The characters speak in colloquial language, using words such as "silly," "darling chicken-flower," and "wop." The language is humble, but it is suggestive of the culture and personality of the characters.