| dc.description.abstract | Every profession has-its own select terminology, its jargon, and freshman composition is no exception. We have developed numerous and subtle means to label gram.~atical errors, to designate the components of an essay, to explain the methods of paragraph development. Strangely, though, most composition instructors are at a loss to describe a student's style in non-metaphorical terms: the style is either choppy, dull, vigorous, awkward, elegant, jerky, or smooth. In the following study, I have attempted a remedy for this lack. By this scheme, if a student (or instructor) asserts that the style of a particular piece of writing is "elegant,'' he is forced first to define the term elegance specifically and then to identify and tabulate all occurrences of it in the given text. Statistics possess no magic. In fact, counting the number of concrete nouns per 1000 words proves nothing except that the occurrence of such nouns is high or low, but through such a procedure, students discover one of the contributors to concrete language. Thus, the value of the technique is not that it provides "objective" proof for stylistic pronouncements; rather, it helps to confirm and illustrate valid statements about style or indicate those which are not square with the facts. | |
