Alice Munro's Conversational Style

Linda Pilliere (1, 2)

1 LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone
2 AMU - Aix Marseille Université

The aim of this article is to explore the conversational style of Alice Munro in the collection of short stories 'Dance of the Happy Shades'. While several critics have commented upon this characteristic trait of her style, especially in her first-person narratives, few have analysed how it is actually achieved. Using recent research on the conversational genre, Biber (1988, 2004), Chafe (1982) and Tannen (1982, 1989), I investigate which elements of the spoken mode are to be found in Munro’s writing, and how they are used in her fiction. Finally, I address the question of why Munro may have chosen to write in such a way, and the light that it may shed on her narrative technique in general.

Mots clés: Alice Munro; Conversational; involvement; fragmentation; syntax; short story; first-person narrator

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Linguistique; Littératures

Linda Pilliere. Alice Munro's Conversational Style. Études de stylistique anglaise, 2015, 8, pp.37-56. ⟨halshs-01421653⟩