random writing query

[schmerica]

lyra_sena: well, the truth is that as much as it makes us uncomfortable? the distinction is very real.

Okay, so I'm taking the above sentence completely out of context from the conversation lyra_sena and I were having earlier, because it's a perfect example of a kind of style I've been wondering about a lot lately.

Basically, that questioning intonation/statements that are not statements thing -- that's how I talk, really a lot of the time. I know quite a few people who do the same thing, even; it's not something I notice in everyday conversation.

On the other hand, though, it's something that can suddenly become *really* noticeable in writing. There's been a couple of stories I've read lately (though, dammit, I apparently cannot *locate* any of them again) that had this kind of construction in them. And for, say, Gretchen in Mean Girls it comes across as perfectly natural, whether in dialogue or narration, but for Ray Kowalski, it seems odd. It makes me think of the author, rather than the character a lot of the time.

Is this true for others?

I'm trying to think of what it is that makes it read that way to me. The first thing that comes to my mind is that is sounds "feminine" -- except that word is no end of troublesome, and even just that description kind of gets my rankles up. Especially when I try and figure out what I mean by that, and the next word I come up with is "uncertain".

Is it something along those lines? There are male characters whom I can picture such dialogue working with -- Dan Rydell, perhaps, comes to mind. Is it simpler than that -- just another matter of character voice? Am I just on crack? Am I on crack but have a point in this instance? I don't know.

Comments

[gloss]

I've been wondering about this. I haven't seen it in fic so much as in LJ meta and essays, something I think I first noticed in jennyo's and fox1013's work. While I think a persuasive case can be made for it being read as stereotypically "feminine" (with all the standard disclaimers, *please*) along the lines of Deborah Tannen's sociolinguistics stuff, I tend to read it otherwise, as a casual rhetorical move, one that [a] engages the reader through interrogative address and then [b] emphasizes the final clause by setting it off as a sentence on its own.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*grins* See, when I'm talking with Fox? We talk like this. All the time. I don't even notice it in lj entries and such, I find -- it's so pervasive to the way I think and express myself, and the way my friends do. But I think you definitely do make a good point there -- it's not *just* the uncertainty or "feminine" socialization; there's other, interesting things going on there.