Leech and Short’s Checklist of Lexical Features in Style in Fiction : A Theoretical Analysis

This paper aims at investigating Leech and Short's Checklist of Lexical Features in their book Style in Fiction (2007) in order to help students of Stylistics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels to deeply understand the application of such features. Leech and Short put these lexical features in the form of questions that should be answered by students who are conducting a stylistic lexical analysis of any literary work. In this paper, the researcher will mainly highlight how such features can operate in literary texts by providing explanation to these questions and answer them with examples.


Introduction
Stylistics is said by Leech and Short (2007) to investigate "the relation between the writer's artistic achievement, and how it is achieved through language …. It studies the relation between the significances of a text, and the linguistic characteristics in which they are manifest" (pp. 55-56). These linguistic characteristics are called "markers" or "features" To what semantic fields do words belong?
To be able to answer these questions while reading a given text, the reader should understand some stylistic concepts: 1.1. Simple or complex vocabulary? Jackson and Amvela (2000, p. 4) make a distinction between simple and complex words, stating that this distinction is based on "morphological analysis" of the words.
According to them, simple words "are all free morphemes" and they are "morphologically unanalyzable" (ibid.). Some examples are fact, number, think, play, dear, secret …etc.
Complex words, on the other hand, "are formed from simpler words by the addition of affixes or some other kind of morphological modification" (ibid.). Some examples are disappoint, reconcile, reasoning, definition, reference, rougher …etc.

Formal or colloquial vocabulary?
According to Jackson and Amvela (2000), contend that "the Old English word is the most colloquial, the French is more literary, and the Latin word more learned" (p. 35). They add that "words from Old English are generally shorter than their French or Latin synonyms. They also tend to belong to the ordinary, colloquial language," whereas Latinate words "may sometimes be more formal or technical than a synonym that entered English as a consequence of the Norman French invasion" (p. 97). They exemplify this using three synonymous verbs, the first of which comes from Old English (i.e. to ask), the second from French (i.e. to question), and the third from Latin (i.e. to interrogate).

Descriptive or evaluative vocabulary?
Any vocabulary can have either a descriptive or an evaluative meaning, depending on the context in which it is used. A descriptive meaning of a word (also called propositional meaning) is the one which "bears on reference or truth" (Kortmann & Loebner, 2013, p. 22). The evaluative meaning, according to Wales (2001), is "akin to emotive meaning: there are words which affect our emotions because they have connotations of approval or disapproval" (p. 139). The evaluative word, for Crystal (2008), is "a term used in semantics for a type of modality where propositions express the speaker's attitude (e.g. surprise, regret) towards what is being said"(p. 176). In this sense, descriptive words express objectivity because they are related to the truth; whereas, the evaluative words are subjective because they express the speaker's own point of view or attitude. For instance, words such as "wide," "thin" and "hard" are descriptive since they describe something is really like. On the other hand, the word " practical" in "John is thinks that he is a practical father" is an evaluative word because it evaluates John in his own eyes.

The use of emotive (associative) meanings vs. referential meanings
The emotive (also called affective, occasional, associative or connotative meaning) refers to "the effect that a word might have on the emotions of the reader or the listener" (Wales, 2001, p. 123). In contrast, the referential meaning is called denotation. According to Wales (2001), denotation is used to "distinguish what is seen as the basic or centra l conceptual or referential meaning of words or signs, without the associations (connotations) or metaphoric meanings which they can acquire in particular contexts" (p. 100). She adds that the "dictionary definitions of lexical items are based on denotative or denotational meaning" (ibid.). For instance, the word "home" denotes a place where we live especially with our family," whereas, this word may have an emotive meaning to the expatriate (i.e. longing or yearning).

Collocations and Registers
The term Collocation is first coined by J.R. Firth in his semantic theory (1957). It is derived from the Latin word "collocation" which means "ordering or arrangement" (Bussmann, 2006, p. 200). According to Crystal (2008, p. 87), it refers "to the habitual cooccurrence of individual lexical items". For him, the collocated lexical items are called www.ijohmn.com 24 "collocates," and their ability to collocate together is their "collocability or collocational range." For example, the adjective "weak" collocates with the following nouns: character, tea, coffee, acid, heart, link, economy, cry, argument…etc (See McIntosh et al., 2009, for more collocates.). The meaning of the adjective weak differs according to the noun it collocates with. In "weak tea," it describes the flavour of the tea (i.e. it contains a lot of water compared to its other components); whereas in "weak character," it does not refer to the physical weakness but to moral or the social one (i.e., not persuasive or influential). This is proved by Aitchison (as cited in Partington, 1998, p. 16) who maintains that "humans learn word-meaning from what occurs alongside." According to Partington, "a particular collocation in a particular text is usual or unusual" (ibid., p. 17). He adds that this "collocational normality is dependent on genre, register and style i.e. what is normal in one kind of a text may be quite unusual in another (ibid.). Wales (2001, pp. 67-68) maintains that "habitual collocations are a recognizable feature of different registers…. But poetic effect depends more on the exploitation of the non-habitual, the unusual." The collocations can indicate the register and the style of the speech. Partington (as cited in Partington, 1998, p. 17) clarifies this relationship by an example as he points out that "collocations such as vigorous depression and dull highlights may seem odd out of context but that, placed in their register-specific habitats of, respectively, meteorology and photography, they are quite normal."

Specialized Vocabulary
The specialized vocabulary is known as "jargon." Mandell & Kirszner (2012, p. 195) define jargon as "the specialized or technical Vocabulary of a trade, a profession, or an academic discipline." Bussmann (2006, p. 607) maintains that this specialized language "is inaccessible to non-specialists." For instance, the term "phoneme" can be accessible for linguistics specialists but inaccessible for non-specialists of language.

The semantic fields of words
The semantic field is defined by Bussmann (2006, p. 673) as "a set of semantically related words whose meanings delimit each other and are said to cover a whole conceptual or objective field without gaps." Wales (2001, p. 150) also calls it "the conceptual field" and adds that this semantic or conceptual field is "reflected by the lexical field." Hence, the semantic field of emotions can be reflected by some lexical items such as happiness, these words are happiness, materialism, beauty, anger and grudge. This means that abstract words do not have to do with the physical world but with the mental or imaginative world. Eschholz and Rosa (2012, p. 284) illustrate this idea by contending that if two people disagree about abstract things, this does not mean that one of them is right and the other is wrong. They exemplify this idea by stating that "you may find a forest beautiful, while someone else might find it frightening, and neither of you would be wrong." This is simply because "beauty and fear are ideas: they exist in your mind, not in the forest" (ibid.).
One the other hand, the concrete nouns are defined by Mandell and Kirszner (2012, p. 467) as words that "name things that readers can see, hear, taste or smell, or touch." For example, we have words like chair, soup, stone, table, number…etc. These concrete words have to do with the real physical world. This is also obvious in Jackson's (2013, p. 55) definition of concrete nouns as "nouns that refer to observable, tangible objects in reality." Eschholz and Rosa (2012, p. 284) clarify this point by stating that disagreement on concrete things means that one of the speakers is right and the other is wrong, or both of them are wrong. They maintain that "you claim that the forest is mostly birch trees, while the other person says that it is mostly pineonly one of you can be right, and both of you can be wrong." This is simply because "the kinds of trees that grow in the forest is a concrete fact, not an abstract idea" (ibid.) This linguistic distinction between abstract and concrete words can lead us to a similar psychological distinction between abstract and concrete thinking. Corsini (2002, p. 202) believes that concrete thinking focuses "on immediate experiences and specific objects or events, as contrasted with thinking that involves abstractions, generalizations and totalities." For him, abstract thinking includes the ability "to grasp essentials and common properties, to keep different aspects of situation in mind and shift from one to another, to predict and to plan ahead, to think symbolically, and to draw conclusions" (ibid., p. 5). one of which is that "a concrete thinker can recognize that John likes Betty; a more abstract thinker can reflect on emotions, like affection" (ibid.).

Proper names
Sometimes, the author's selection of the names of his fictional characters or places is not arbitrary. These proper names can be symbolic of a certain characteristic that the author wants to convey to the reader. The role of proper names in characterization and place description can be furthermore shown in the fact that they can be either portmanteau words or onomatopoeic words. Portmanteau words are the result of "blending or telescoping." In this process, "two words of similar or merely associated meaning are merged into a new word" (Sihler, 2000, p. 85).

Collective nouns
Lyons (1977, p. 315) defines collective nouns as "lexemes which denote collections or groups, of persons or objects." These nouns fall into different grammatical classes. They can be "singular" such as clergy and cattle, or "plural" such as furniture. Others can be both singular and plural, and this depends on whether the noun is "seen as a single collective entity, or as a collection of individual entities (cf. the committee is wrong vs. the committee are wrong)" (Crystal, 2008, p. 86). To be able to answer these questions while reading a given text, the reader should understand some stylistic concepts:

Frequency of adjectives
It refers to the number of occurrence of these adjectives in the text. This depends on their usage: if the adjectives are used a lot in the text, they are frequent.

Attributes of adjectives
Adjectives can be classified, according to the type of attribute they embody, into physical, psychological, visual, auditory, referential, emotive and evaluative. This classification of adjectives is a semantic one. Leech, Deuchar and Hoogenraad (1982, p. 47) maintain that "adjectives typically denote some quality or property attributed to nouns: most commonly they are used to narrow down, or specify, the reference of nouns."

Physical adjectives
They describe the physical appearance of something or someone. Leech et al. (1982, p. 47)

2)
Psychological adjectives They denote the mental or emotional state of a person. Leech et al. (1982, p. 47) contend that these psychological qualities have to do with "emotions: funny, brave, sad, amazing."

3)
Visual adjectives: E.g., a clear sky -a red flower, a big bear.

6)
Referential adjectives It is also called "relational adjective." According to Lieber and Stekauer (2014, p. 279), relational adjectives (or referential) are those which are used to "classify entities, denoting the domain to which they belong, or to specify other entities with which they establish relations of various kinds."

7)
Emotive adjectives They are used to characterize emotions, whether positive, negative or neutral. E.g.,  I never knew you were unhappy, my child.

Evaluative adjectives
According to Givón (2001, p. 82), these adjectives "signal subjective judgments of desirability along physical or social dimensions, pertaining to either inherent traits or temporary states." Examples of these adjectives are good/bad (temporary states); or beautiful/ugly (inherent traits).

Gradability of adjectives
Adjectives can be classified into gradable and non-gradable. According to Leech et al. (1982, p. 48 According to Nida (1964, p. 89), however, the attributive adjective may not only premodify but also postmodify the head of the noun phrase. He calls these postmodifying attributives "post-posed attributives." Kim and Sells (2008, p.119) regard these post-posed adjectives in a noun phrase as one of the "postnominal modifiers." E.g.:  anything fanciful, fantastic, or sentimental.
In this respect, Nida also mentions another case in which we have "adjective attributes which are in turn postmodified by post-posed attributives" (ibid.). E.g.:


The best way possible is to manage your time.
On the other hand, the predicative adjectives have a "predicative function, ie they can function as subject complement, or as object complement" (Quirk et al., 1985, p. 403 This is a main idea.

D)
* This idea is main. To be able to answer these questions while reading a given text, the reader should understand some stylistic concepts:

Stativity vs. dynamicity: A semantic classification
Verbs are semantically classified by Leech et al. (1982, p. 46) into different types. One of the qualities that can differentiate between stative and dynamic verbs is progressiveness. It is agreed among many linguists that stative verbs are generally not compatible with progressiveness: Comrie (1976), Quirk et al. (1985), Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999) and Römer (2005). However, Comrie (1976) contends that some stative verbs can be formed in the progressive, and he calls them "stative progressive verbs," most of which are "verbs of perception" such as hear, see. Quirk et al. (1985, p. 202) maintain that the progressiveness of some stative verbs requires "some change of interpretation." Biber et al. (1999, p. 472) agree with Quirk et al. in this respect, stating that there are "lexical associations of progressive aspect" of the stative verbs:  I see you. I am seeing you. (includes some emphasis)

Factivity of verbs: A pragmatic classification
The term "factivity" is used in Pragmatics in classifying verbs or predicates in general into factive, non-factive and counterfactive verbs. Facitvity of verbs has to do with the term "presupposition." Levinson (1983, p. 181) lists factive verbs as one of the "presupposition-triggers" or "sources of presuppositions." Crystal (2008, p. 384) defines presupposition as "what a speaker assumes in saying a particular sentence, as opposed to what is actually asserted." It is also defined as "a certain type of logical relationship between statements" (ibid.).
A factive verb, according to Crystal (ibid.,p. 184), is "a verb which takes a complement clause, and where the speaker presupposes the truth of the proposition expressed in that clause." Examples of these verbs are know, agree, realize, regret, etc. This is not only applicable to verbs but also to any "adjective, or even NP that can take complement clause" (Huang, 2012, p. 114 By contrast, non-factive verbs or constructions "do not commit the speaker to the truth of the proposition expressed in the complement clause, e.g. believe, think" (Crystal, 2008, p. 184)  www.ijohmn.com 35 may or may not make bets and that the addressee has or has not tried hard respectively.
On the other hand, we have also what is called counter-factive verbs or constructions which "presuppose the falsity of the proposition expressed in the complement clause, e.g. wish, pretend," (ibid.) as in:  I wish she could walk.
It should be noted that Westra (2014, para. 6) recommends the use of factive and counter-factive verbs in persuasive arguments. He maintains: Keep in mind the factive verb predicates. They are a powerful linguistic tool to help you be more influential and persuasive in your day to day communication with others.
Notice how some verbs you use create hesitation and resistance, while the factive and counter-factive verbs create more certainty and believability in your arguments.

Transitivity of verbs: A syntactic classification
Verbs can be syntactically divided into transitive, intransitive or linking (intensive) verbs. According to Hurford (1994, p. 242), a transitive verb "takes a (direct or indirect) object," such as hear, know, give, make …etc. These verbs are "followed with noun phrases." This type of verb is contrasted with the intransitive verbs "which do not take objects" as well as with linking verbs or copular verbs which "may have a noun phrase after them as in Geraldine is a bright student." However, according to Hurford, the noun phrases after transitive verbs are "held to be the direct objects" of these verbs, while those after intransitive verbs are regarded "the complements of these verbs" (ibid.). Biber et al. (1999, p. 380) agree with Hurford's classification of verbs into transitive, intransitive and copular. However, they extend the classification of transitive verbs to include three categories: monotransitive, ditransitive and complex transitive verbs. They discuss these types with reference to what is called "valency patterns." These are "patterns

Adverbs
 Are adverbs frequent?
 What semantic functions do they perform (manner, place, direction, time, degree, etc.)?
 Is there any significant use of sentence adverbs (conjuncts such as so, therefore, however; disjuncts such as certainly, obviously, frankly)?
To be able to answer these questions while reading a given text, the reader should  Leech et al. (1982, p. 48) divide adverbs into three types. The first type is the circumstancial adverbs which "add some kind of circumstacncial information (of time, place, manner, etc.) to the idea expressed in the core of the clause." The second type is the degree adverbs which "modify adjectives and other words in terms of gradability" (ibid., p.
49). The third type is the sentence adverbs which "apply to the whole clause of sentence, express an attitude to it, or a connective between it and another clause or sentence" (ibid. fortunately, probably, actually and however, do not answer questions" (ibid. ).Yet they can be categorized into: attitude and connective (They are also called stance and linking respectively by Biber et al., 1999, p. 549). Attitude adverbs are like fortunately, probably, however; and connective adverbs are like so, yet, therefore. Concerning the attitude adverbs, they are classified into three groups, according to Eastwood (1994, pp. 260-261): focus and viewpoint adverbs such as only, especially (The adverbs only and especially are called restrictive according to Biber et al., 1999, p. 556.) and medically; truth adverbs such as probably and truly; and comment adverbs such as luckily and unfortunately. Biber et al.'s (1999, pp. 557-558) treatment of attitude adverbs is somehow different. They regard the attitude adverbs as one of the three types of the stance adverbs along with the epistemic stance and style stance adverbs. For them, the attitude stance adverbs "tell a speaker's or writer's attitude towards a proposition: I lost the manual that goes with it, unfortunately" (ibid.). The style stance adverbs, however, are used to "comment on the manner of speaking which the speaker is adopting: for example, is the speaker (or writer) using the language sincerely, frankly, or simply?" (ibid.). The epistemic stance adverbs have different semantic functions: they can "show levels of certainty or doubt: No it's alright I'll probably manage with it," or they can "comment on the reality or actuality of a proposition: Actually I'm not very fussy at all," or they can be used "to show that a preposition is based on some evidence without specifying the exact source" such as apparently and clearly, or they can "show the limitation on a proposition: Our losses were mainly due to promotional activity from our rivals," and finally they can be intended to "convey imprecision" such as the "the hedges: It was kind of strange" (ibid.).
As per degree adverbs, they are believed to "mark that the extent or degree is either greater or less than usual than that of something else in the neighboring discourse" (Biber et al., 1999, p. 554). Hence, they are categorized into two groups: amplifiers (or intensifiers) which are intended to "increase intensity" (ibid.) such as more, very, so, too, extremely…etc.; and diminishers (or downtoners) which are meant to "scale down the effect of the modified item" (ibid., p. 555) such as slightly, somehow, quite and rather.  Biber et al. (1999, p. 252) assign great importance to the context in order to understand the meaning of any adverb. They believe that "the meaning of an adverb is often context-dependent." The adverb just can best exemplify this dependency. According to Biber et al. (ibid.), this adverb can be "denoting closeness in time e.g. the horse has just had its foal." It can also be used for "increasing the intensity of a following element: e.g.

Context-dependency of semantic adverbs
just dreadful." The same adverb may be used in some contexts for the purpose of "decreasing intensity of a following element: e.g. just 4.5 pints down," or for "signaling manner: e.g. it'll just stop."

5.3.
Syntactic functionality of adverbs: (conjuncts, adjuncts, disjuncts, subjuncts) Quirk et al. (1985, p. 440) make a distinction between the four basic syntactic functions of adverbs: adjuncts, subjuncts, disjuncts, and conjuncts. This distinction is based on the adverb's integration with or peripherality to the clause elements. They maintain that adjuncts and subjuncts are "relatively integrated within the structure of the clause." On the other hand, the disjuncts and the conjuncts have "a peripheral relation in the sentence" (ibid.). Quirk et al. (1985, p. 504) differentiate between adjuncts and the other types of adverbials by stating that "it is only the adjuncts that closely resemble other sentence elements such as S, C, and O. Like them, for example, and unlike the other adverbials, an adjunct can be the focus of a cleft sentence," as in: I have held no confidence with anyone, However, the syntactic integration of subjuncts within the clause elements is due to the fact that they "have to a greater or lesser extent, a subordinate role in relation to one of the other clause elements or to the clause as a whole" (Hoye, 1997, p. 155), as in the disjuncts "comment on the content of the communication" (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973, p. 242). This kind of adverbial can be exemplified by the following sentences:  Frankly, I do not know. (style disjuncts) -Unfortunately, he lost the game.
(attitudinal disjuncts) However, according to Quirk et al. (1985, p. 504), conjuncts "express the speaker's assessment of the relation between two linguistic units" as in: She did not say a word, for her heart was broken.

Conclusion
To conclude, Leech and Short's checklist of stylistic features (the lexical category) presented in their book Style in Fiction (2007) is very handy for those who seek to conduct a lexical analysis of literary works. Presenting such checklist in the form of questions to be answered for any lexical analysis of a text facilitates the lexical analysis of any text.
However, these questions are not enough elaborated in the book. Hence, this paper tackles such questions with detailed explanation and examples so that it would be a guide for those who want to conduct a stylistic analysis in terms of the lexicology of the text.