[Corpora-List] NY Times Book Review Section

[John F. Sowa]

On 7/30/2011 9:00 AM, Susana Sotillo wrote:
> Mark et al., I thought you might be interested in reading this essay
> (also published in Zimmer's blog):
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/books/review/the-mechanic-muse-the-jargon-of-the-novel-computed.html?_r=1

Thanks for the reference.  But I'd like to comment on the following 
point by Zimmer:

> Has a vernacular style become the standard for the typical fiction writer?
> Or is literary language still a distinct and peculiar beast?

As examples of differences between spoken and written language,
Zimmer notes:

> Sour facial expressions, gruff noises and emphatic bodily movements
> (wiggling fingers and gritting teeth) would seem to rule the verbs
> peculiar to today’s published fiction...
> “Bolting upright” and “drawing one’s breath” are two more fiction-
> specific turns of phrase revealed by the corpus.

Anyone present in the situation would not comment on such phenomena
because the listeners would observe them as easily as the speaker.

It would be better to compare spoken language with the quoted
speech in fiction.

John Sowa

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