I found an exemplary example of this in a paper written about Yann Martel’s infamous novel Life of Pi: an amazing fictional story about a boy and a tiger surviving and coexisting in the middle of the ocean on a lifeboat. With the popularity of the novel, it is correspondingly popularly interpreted and discussed on an academic level. June Dwyer, one of those academics who enjoy discussing Life of Pi at a higher and more metaphorical level, wrote an article titled Yann Martel’s ‘Life of Pi’ and the Evolution of the Shipwreck Narrative. Dwyer is a highly experienced professor at Manhattan University and published this piece in an academic journal titled: Modern Language Studies, volume 35. In her thirteen-page analysis, Dwyer talks about the reinvention of the shipwreck narrative, which she explains is a common theme in children’s narratives that involves something that she calls: the “domination paradigm” (Dwyer, 11). While this statement sounds, albeit, a little confusing, Dwyer uses a specific technique in her academic analysis of Life of Pi that makes her version official style writing increasingly comprehensible:
Yann Martel's prizewinning novel, Life of Pi (2001) addresses this shift. It provides a new paradigm, reversing the trend toward human dominance over animals that develops in children's literature involving shipwrecks and the already established pattern of human dominance in the shipwrecks of adult literary history. In terms of children's literature, animals have traditionally been treated as equals — friends, even — but as the readers and the protagonists grow older, the affinity dwindles, and the dominance of human over nonhuman animal emerges. However, with Life of Pi, the domination paradigm is replaced with a more ecologically acceptable one of respect.
Firstly, there are several incredibly common features of official writing used in this block of text. In the first sentence, an appositive is already used as well as large words such as “prizewinning” and “addresses”. Dwyer uses that big vocabulary in order to imprint the importance of Life of Pi on the reader while also permeating an academic/official tone to the entire sentence. The appositive identifies Life of Pi as a prizewinning novel and is also employed to accomplish that same goal of establishing an aura of intellect. Dwyer had most likely predicted that her audience would mainly be fellow academics, and in order for any of her readers to see this article is credible, it quickly became imperative to publish a piece radiating with techniques commonly associated with the official style.
While Dwyer’s work shows lots of those tired complexities endlessly present in any writing done in the official style, she ensures that there is an earlier given definition to certain terms which she uses in her writing. The term “domination paradigm” might sound confusing on its own, but once you learn that June Dwyer kindly wrote out the full definition of what this means earlier in the piece, it can be difficult to not know what Dwyer means when she drops yet another sample of her favorite Life of Pi-related buzzword, “It provides a new paradigm, reversing the trend toward human dominance over animals that develops in children's literature involving shipwrecks and the already established pattern of human dominance in the shipwrecks of adult literary history.” That sentence is a lot, but you never have to read it again because for the rest of the article, Dwyer replaces that three-line sentence with two words: “domination paradigm”. Those two words function as a synecdoche does: a single part represents a whole. While Dwyer’s trick of defining a term and then making her piece several pages shorter than it has to be, she was most likely able to do this because her writing uses more than just the official style. The long, listy, and wordy world of official style exists around the ideas of both lengthy and complex ideas and diction. A pure example of the official style cannot exist without those two things, and Dwyer’s strategic shortening of a three-line sentence defies that pure example.
And while that little trick, along with several variations of it, make a hefty portion of Dwyer’s writing far more accessible than it would have been otherwise, there are still plenty of devices familiar with the official style within even just the block of text shown above. The very last sentence reads, “However, with Life of Pi, the domination paradigm is replaced with a more ecologically acceptable one of respect.” This sentence contains countless complexities, and while that sentence can be turned into something like: However, in Life of Pi the theme of man and animal becoming friends has been replaced with a more realistic theme of respect between man and animal”, there is a concrete and unarguable reason for which Dwyer does this: credibility. The credibility Dwyer sought after while writing her piece is not something to confuse with the credibility linked to accessibility; it is credibility linked solely to the opinions and thoughts of her peers. Her word choice and syntax throughout her piece uses those things such as hefty diction, appositives, introductory phrases, and the like in order to communicate her knowledge on Life of Pi and its retelling of the shipwreck narrative as credible and something to be trusted. A common argument against using the official style is often about wordiness, but an introductory phrase such as, “In terms of children's literature…” (Dwyer, 11). allow Dwyer to specify. That specificity is what makes her writing credible in academia. While there is a plethora of examples in government texts and incomprehensible papers written by a diverse pool of people who have attempted to write in the official style, Dwyer has provided an example of one way to properly use official style without butchering a reader’s interest.
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