Exercises In Style

Exercises In Style is a book by a French Linguist, Rayond Queneau, in which the same simplistic story is told 99 times in differing ways.  Sometimes the story is first person, sometimes third; other times everything is reported verbatim, and yet others everything is reported vaguely.  The result is that Exercises In Style is a great book for demonstrating how context and background to something can change it entirely.  The story is one of a vague encounter and mild confrontation on the public transport system in Paris, the two protagonists meet twice, once when they argue and once in passing later.  The different ways in which the story is told leave the reader sometimes summising that one is in the right, and sometimes summising that the other is, while others of the Exercises will give the impression that the whole thing is a folly and to be ignored.  Another great book is Exercises in Style by Matt Madden which is the same thing but with a simple comic strip re-‘told’ in many ways graphically.

Anyway, in the original work, Queneau demonstrated that context, supporting evidence and plot, and the presentation of a work linguistically would be as important to the conveyance of a story as the basic occurences themselves.  He demonstrated in perhaps the most fun way he could’ve that these things are vital, and Exercises in style is a book that few academics working in the mechanics of writing will have not heard about.

At it’s lowest level this is demonstrated by a phrase my drama teacher used whilst I was assisting with a class of year nines, when I was at Sixth Form.  Facing me and stepping towards me he yelled “I hate you!”, then he paused called us back to positions and looked to me again.  This time he said “I [PAUSE] Hate you?” with an upward inflection as if questioning reality itself.  On paper, in a script without stage directions, each sentence he said is EXACTLY the same.  In reality one means the opposite of the other.  I’ve made the point well that context, inflection, verbalisation and so on are vital to communication.

I’ve recently been the victim of chinese whispers, and I hope it doesn’t happen to you.  A friend of mine believes I disapprove of her relationship with another friend of mine because of something I said, when in fact I was just expressing some of my exasperations and anxieties to a friend.  My point here isn’t to write one of those blogs that you can read knowing it’s a private message to someone (like a facebook “I miss a certain someone” status), in fact, I’ve not told anyone who she might know about this blog, it’s just an outlet for my frustration on the matter.

Queneau would have a field day with how she has interpretted events, and so this is just a little way for me to let off some steam and also warn a few randoms away from these situations.

Parents. Tell your kids about colloquial linguistics, before someone else does!

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