style and pseudonymity in pauline scholarship 123
of allan Bell (and the many works that followed him), style functions as
a feature of “audience design,”32 the tendency of authors to design their
speech to accommodate to each specific audience they address.33 Bell
showed style-shifts rate sometimes as high as 98% variation within some
features due to changing audiences, although variation rarely exceeds
75%, most often registering in at around 50% variation for any lexico-
grammatical feature due to addressee alteration alone.34 Bell’s model also
allows language users to employ bilingualism, vernacular/dialect varia-
tion or archaic forms to identify with socially or geographically distant
audiences35 by way of initiative or referee design, which also accounts for
style-shifts related to topic variation or reference to an absent audience,
such as shifting polemics in Pauline literature. the types of social factors
influencing linguistic shift are numerous and are reflected by a host of
field studies.36
essential to Bell’s theory are two dimensions which variation can
occupy—style and social—and which imply three different “levels.”37
level 1 is synchronic and describes changes a speaker makes to accom-
modate to another speaker. this level is responsive to the audience,
which is where Bell spends much of his theoretical energy. level 2 is dia-
chronic, involving the changing language of an individual speaker over
time—alterations in their mental lexicon as new social environments are
32 Bell, “language Style,” 145–202; allan Bell, “Back in Style: reworking audience
design,” in eckert and rickford (eds.), Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, 139–69; allan
Bell, “Speech accommodation theory and audience design,” in e. K. Brown and anne
anderson (eds.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Boston: elsevier, 2006), 648–51;
allan Bell, “Speech accommodation theory and audience design,” in Jacob mey (ed.),
Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics (amsterdam: elsevier, 2009), 991–94.
33 on audience design, see also milroy and gordon, Sociolinguistics, 204–207.
34 Bell, “language Style,” 152–54.
35 Bell, “language Style,” 163–64.
36 See, e.g., nancy c. doran, “Stylistic Variation in language restricted to Private
Sphere use,” in douglas Biber and edward finegan (eds.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives on
Register (oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics; new york: oxford university Press, 1994),
217–34; John Baugh, “african american language and literacy,” in mary Schleppegrell
and cecilia colombi (eds.), Developing Advanced Literacy in First and Second Languages:
Meaning with Power (mahwah, nJ: lawrence erlbaum associates, 2002), 182–83; norma
mendoza-denton, Jennifer hay, and Stephanie Jannedy, “Probabilistic Sociolinguistics:
Beyond Variable rules,” in rens Bod (ed.), Probabilistic Linguistics (cambridge, ma: mit
Press, 2003), 98–138; h. Samy alim, Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture
(new york: routledge, 2006), 60–65.
37 “Variation on the ‘style’ dimension within the speech of a single speaker derives from
and echoes the variation which exists between speakers on the ‘social’ dimension” (Bell,
“language Style,” 151; cf. Bell, “reworking Style,” 141; Bell, “Style,” 95).