Linguistic Levels, Language Functions, and Narrative Styles
Understanding Verbal Language
Verbal language is a cultural invention of humankind, essential for the development of human intelligence. When a comprehensive development of this capacity is not reached, its full realization cannot be achieved.
Linguistic Usage Levels
Cultivated Level
Characterized by the use of an elaborated and formal code associated with written language. Its main features include complete and correct syntactic structures, precise lexicon, etc.
Conversational Level
Characterized by the use of a restricted code, i.e., the lexicon and expressions of the common language shared by all speakers within a community.
Vulgar Level
Typical of speakers with low linguistic training, leading to improprieties often called slang. These errors can be phonetic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, or semantic.
Functions of Language
There is always a purpose or function in the communicative act. Three dominant functions are:
- Denotative or Representative Function: Dominates messages with the objective intention of presenting information, avoiding any assessment by the issuer.
- Expressive or Emotive Function: Predominates in messages revealing the subjectivity of the issuer.
- Appellative or Conative Function: Predominates in messages whose primary purpose is to influence the receiver’s behavior, attempting to elicit a response.
Language Standard and Speech
Language is a social system of abstract linguistic signs that becomes concrete only when a speaker uses it. Speech is the concrete embodiment of language. Cultural, geographical, and age differences manifest in speech.
Levels of Linguistic Analysis
- Phonetic-Phonological: Studies the phonemes of a language, its sounds, and their combinations.
- Morphosyntactic or Grammar: Deals with the grammatical categories of words and the relationships between syntagmas and sentences.
- Lexical-Semantic: Concerns the vocabulary set belonging to a language, word formation, relationships between words, and the meanings they acquire in specific communicative situations.
Description Techniques
To describe is to highlight the significant qualities of a person, object, phenomenon, process, landscape, environment, or situation. The descriptive process typically follows these steps:
- Observation of the reality to be described.
- Selection of the most relevant and meaningful data.
- Organization of data within a structured framework.
- Clear, accurate, and appropriate oral or written expression of the observed elements.
Objective Description
Often linked to formal or technical language, featuring total or partial concealment of the sender and receiver. The focus is primarily on the message content.
Subjective Description
Typical of conversational, everyday language, and the language of literary works or opinion pieces, reflecting the speaker’s perspective.
Narrative Styles
Direct Style
Reproduces the exact words spoken by someone, often marked by quotation marks or specific introductory verbs (verba dicendi).
Indirect Style
Reports speech through the narrator’s voice, paraphrasing the original words.
Free Indirect Style
Blends direct and indirect styles. It retains the character’s voice or perspective but often suppresses quotation marks and introductory verbs, integrating the character’s thoughts directly into the narrative.
Interior Monologue
Presents a character’s thoughts directly as they occur, often unstructured, creating a close union between the narrative and the character’s consciousness, sometimes blurring the line between narrator and character.