Style of creative nonfiction

Abstract

Abstract The study examines author style within underlying patterns of variation in nonfiction essays. The study employs corpus linguistic methodology, building on research on style in fiction (Biber & Finegan, 1994; Biber, 2008b; Egbert, 2012), applies a multidimensional analysis to a corpus of nonfiction essays written by modern authors, a previously unexplored domain, and identifies four unique but interrelated dimensions of variation based on linguistic co-occurrence: Interactive vs. Informational Style, Abstract Expository vs. Concrete Descriptive Style, Immediate vs. Removed Style, and Hypothetical Style. Authors’ works are then plotted along these dimensions, revealing stylistic tendencies with relation to the observed patterns of variation. The study also observes that considerable within-author variation along a given dimension results from differences in situational characteristics of individual texts rather than simply idiosyncratic preferences for certain language. The study contributes to the field of corpus stylistics and has practical implications for creative writing, literary analysis, and translation.