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Exploring Fictional Styles along Universal Dimensions of Register Variation
Abstract Multi-dimensional (MD) analyses have been carried out to identify the linguistic parameters of register variation in many different discourse domains and many different languages (see, e.g., Biber 1988; 1995; 2014). Each MD study has identified linguistic dimensions that are peculiar to a particular language/discourse domain. However, the more theoretically interesting finding is that linguistically similar dimensions emerge in nearly all MD studies. Two of these dimensions are especially robust, making them strong candidates for universal dimensions of register variation: 1) a fundamental opposition between clausal/“oral” discourse versus phrasal/“literate” discourse, and 2) the opposition between “narrative” versus “non-narrative” discourse. It turns out that these same two functional parameters are fundamentally important in the discourse domain of fictional literature. The present paper overviews results of MD studies of English across discourse domains, and shows how these two universal dimensions are also fundamentally important in fictional literature.
Keywords: Multi-dimensional analyses, register, literature
