‘au revoir’ (goodbye), etc. In the event, the unconventional spelling does not
systematically correspond to features of pronunciation, but rather visually
characterizes Zazie in a humorous manner.
Representing foreign accents in writing is also possible, but more difficult and
sometimes problematic, as readers may be unfamiliar with the targeted accent,
and the author’s way of representing it may be based upon and reinforce
stereotypes.
What’s in a name?
A large vocabulary and a broad repertoire of registers are the tools of the art of
writing. By using stylistic devices to afford their characters a recognizable
identity, and by composing poetry and prose in their own distinct manner, writers
simultaneously establish their own identity as poets, novelists, and playwrights
making a name for themselves. For writers, having a name is important. For
recognition you must be recognizable. To quote an example that Bertrand
Russell introduced in the identity literature of logic, ‘George IV wondered
whether Scott is the author of Waverley’. This sentence has puzzled logicians
because ‘Scott’ refers to Scott and so does ‘the author of Waverley’. Both
expressions should therefore be considered identical, but George IV surely did
not wonder whether Scott is Scott.
Writers make a name for themselves by cultivating a distinctive style. Critics
applaud or censure them for their formal dexterity or clumsiness with words.
They have criteria for distinguishing a great variety of literary styles, trying to
put quality judgements on an objective footing. They also rely on such criteria to
identify an author, for style characterizes both the written work and the writer.
Moreover, there are writers who, while making a name for themselves, do not
use their own. Walter Scott was the author of Waverley, but the author of The
Imaginary Invalid was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, rather than Molière, the name on
the cover (appropriately so called).
Stylistics has long been a method philologists applied to establish the authorship
of documents of unknown origin, including literary works published
anonymously or under a pen name. For instance, the authentication of ‘lost’
Shakespeare plays used to be a cottage industry for philologists. The availability
of electronic corpora and statistics software has turned it into an auspicious field