Being taught the strategies of official style,
I chose an excerpt of the chapter “It wasn’t like that in the book” from
Brian McFarlane’s book Novel to Film to have a
clearer understanding of it. I have read and
analyzed this article for the Literature and Human Experience class last semester,
so I am quite familiar with it. What’s more, the discussion of the relationship between literature and
film adaptation is one of my favorite topics and is also a component of my future
career.
This
article was written by Associate Professor Brian McFarlane at Monash University,
and was published by Clarendon Press in Oxford in 1996. Since he is a scholar
and authority in the field of literary adaptation to film and is teaching in
college, his readers
are likely to
be college students whose major is English Literature or Film, and other fellow colleagues.
I will focus on two
sentences from one paragraph of
the article. The author uses the official style in this
article to maintain respect from his professional colleagues; however, I think
that it would have been more effective and more people would benefit if he used
more plain language.
In the first sentence, MacFarlane says, “But
if merely being bold is no guarantee that the filmmaker will give satisfaction
to audiences who may or may not have read the antecedent novel, neither is a
slavish devotion to the original text: that is, to details of plot, character,
and settings, for example.” The paragraph starts with “but if merely being bold
is no guarantee that the filmmaker will give…” which is a slow sentence
opening, and “being bold” is a noun substitute which in this sentence is the
subject instead of using “it is bold. . .” Also, in this sentence, the usage of
nominalization is apparent. The author uses “the filmmaker will give
satisfaction to audiences” instead of “the filmmaker will satisfy audiences,”
which consciously or unconsciously increases the reading difficulty for the
reader. Sentential adverbs are used in the article order to increase its
complex style. For instance, “that is” in the clause “that is, to details of
plot” is a short phrase placed at the very beginning of a clause or a sentence,
serving as a signal that the whole sentence is especially important.
In the following sentence in the same paragraph,
MacFarlane also argues, “I place a good deal of
BBC classic serial filmmaking in this category: I know enough people loved the
serialization of Pride and Prejudice to warrant its being run twice in
Australia within a few months (though I suspect the local chapter of the Colin
Firth Fan Club of having a hand in that), but it seemed to me the work of an
industrious bricklayer rather than an architect, with one event from the novel
remorselessly following another, without any sense of shape or structuring,
without any apparent point of view on its material.”
In
these excerpts, many strategies are used to construct
longer sentences and complex patterns. The average word per
sentence of the paragraph is 48.6, which sounds like an unimaginable figure.
Moreover, its reading ease is 22, and the average grade level is 20.4. But if
we dig up these sentences, we will discover it is the use of official style
which makes
them that way. Let’s take, for instance, the second sentence “I
place a good…on its material.” It is a six-line sentence and it takes a long
breath to read. One of the reasons is its increased use of punctuation marks.
In this sentence, seven punctuation marks are used, including colon, comma,
bracket and period. Between each mark, the descriptions are long as well. The strategies of nominalization and the noun
substitute, such as “serialization” and “warrant its being run twice” also contribute
to this long sentence. Coordination and prepositional phrase extend it as well,
like “but, “with” and “without,” each of which begins a long description. “With
one event…, without any sense…, without any apparent…”are paralleled
prepositional phrases.
Beyond the strategies that are used in the two
examples to prove that the writer is using an official style, we can discover a
very interesting phenomenon, that the writer uses many “I” words: “I place a good deal…” “I know enough…” “I
suspect…” and “it seems to me...” These usages are all very personal and make
the writing seem not very official. But can it be counted as plain style? As
far as I am concerned, the article is still written in official style. Though
the writer is speaking from his perspective, is using “I,” the strategies that
I list above all can illustrate its official style. The writer’s intention in
doing so is probably because he wants his concepts to be able to be more easily
conveyed to the readers; but at the same time, he also wants to keep his
authority and professional image. The potential readers are supposed to be
advanced college students whose major is English Literature or Film. They have
already gained related professional knowledge and can understand the uses of
certain strategies. If the associate professor wrote this article with a very
simple and understandable way, it indeed would be read and accepted by the more
general public. But at the same time, some concepts will be hard to explain in his
theory and therefore he could lose his professionalism in his field.
Regardless of his intention, as a college student
who is studying English Rhetoric and Writing, I think McFarlane should use a plainer
and less official style. As I have analyzed
before, the possible and potential readers of his writing are likely to be
college students whose major is English Literature or Film, and other professional
colleagues in this field. However, looking back to the average grade level,
which is 20.4, it surprisingly shocks me, because when I searched the average
reading grade level on Google, the most frequent answers pop out are all 7th
grade level. It may not be very accurate, but it reveals a fact that even
college students, who have already studied their first language for so many
years, their reading ability still remains at a relatively low level and they probably
have great difficulties in reading an article whose reading grade level is
20.4, let alone for an international student like me whose first language is
not English.
I still remember when we were required to read this
chapter for ENG 200, I spent so much time on it because of it complex sentences
and jargons. I had to read a sentence or a paragraph for a few times to understand
what the author wanted to express. Comfortingly, I was not the only one who had
problems in reading it. I also heard complaints from my American group members.
Though I concede that making it official style can help to keep McFarlane’s
authority in the professional field and will make the fellow colleagues respect
him, I still maintain the idea that he should write in a plainer style. Writing
in official style like this cannot always reach the audience as it is supposed
to do. He may lose a large quantity of audiences who may give up reading it
just because they meet with challenges. But if he writes in a plainer style, he
can reach a broader audience, not only including college students who are
studying related courses, but also including the people who are interested in
analyzing the relationship between literary works and their film adaptations.
Analyzing the strategies and author’s intention of
writing in an official style, I get to more about how official style which is
used in our daily life. Using official style indeed will decorate our writing,
but we should pay attention to the degree that we use. Only in this way, we can
create more effective writings and achieve more audiences.
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