Being an eminent writer means using various means of speech and literary techniques to make writing mesmerizing, scintillating, and exquisite. By means of witty and subtle literary tricks, words and phrases might be adopted and given new shades of meaning. Due to emotional emphasis and stresses, a writerâs work might be full of lyric, sarcastic, or nostalgic strains that are in charge of the whole mood of a book. A writerâs ingenuity appears in many forms, be it a word choice or a particular grammatical structure, but âtoneâ is a device that is liable for depicting and illustrating a writerâs attitude to a situation they portray. Via a tone, readers are susceptible members to the course of events they witness, as the gloomy and harsh reality are supplanted by spine-chilling or humorous books, where irony or sarcasm is the tone component.
The tone is a literary device reflecting the writerâs attitude concerning the subjects they write about or reflects their perception or evaluations towards members or characters they interact with or describe. Utilizing a particular tone, be it a nostalgic one or pessimistic, a writer builds up a relationship with a reader via messages and the whole mood a writer conveys. An author resorts to diverse techniques reinforcing the tone stress. A narrator displays their word structure manifesting their particular writing traits, figurative language implementation, or a punctuation choice for establishing a narrative voice. The employment of these techniques makes readers understand the hidden meaning behind the lines.
David Sedaris, with his “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” is a telling example of the literary tone’s impact on his writing. This essay is about a middle-aged man struggling with his insecurities and emotional barriers and tries to achieve his long-standing goal in terms of French learning. Combating unpleasant obstacles, he does not lose his heart and confronts his formidable and sinister teacher. To introduce this mood, Sedaris employs humorous and sarcastic tones to highlight the learning process as a joyful and embarrassing process at the same time. Sedaris(2010) writes, “AT THE AGE OF FORTY-ONE, I am returning to school and have to think of myself as what my French textbook calls “a true debutant.” This sentence is a case of self-irony with a sarcastic tone. The first sentence part printed in upper case is correlated to “a true debutant” phrase that sounds ridiculous and ironic by implication. Obviously, a forty-something man cannot be a debutant; he might lack some knowledge, but he is not a total ignoramus. It is a case of sarcastic tone reflecting odd quirks of his fate.
The humorous and sarcastic tones are dominant ones in David Sedaris’ essay. Learning a new language is always complicated, as a person has not developed listening, speaking, and writing skills yet. When people hear an unknown word, they cannot differentiate sounds. Some people describe this learning aspect as troublesome and unpleasant, while Sedaris uses his unique and extraordinary description. When he interacts with his teacher and does not mull over her saying, he uses a combination of random letters, such as “even a fiuscrzsa ticiwelmun knows that a typewriter is feminine (2010).” Sedaris penetrates the humorous approach in his whole essay to make it a fleeting and page-turner writing.
Reference
Sedaris, D. (2010). Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little, Brown Book Group.