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QLDEnglishQuick questions
Unit 2: Texts and culture
Quick questions on Point of view and voice (QCE English Unit 2)
14short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is the speaker's relation to the material?Show answer
6. Account for effect. How does the voice position the reader?
what is their relation to the events?Show answer
2. Choose vocabulary. Period? Region?
What is vocabulary?Show answer
Word choice, register, slang, technical terms, dialect.
What is syntax?Show answer
Sentence length and structure. Short and declarative vs long and qualified.
What is rhythm?Show answer
Sentence music. Stresses, pauses, repetition.
What is tone?Show answer
Emotional colour: dry, lyric, angry, ironic, intimate.
What is stance?Show answer
The speaker's relation to material: superior, sympathetic, distanced, complicit.
What is idiom?Show answer
Characteristic phrases, turns, ticks. A speaker who always says "in fact" or "as it were".
What is character voice?Show answer
The speech of a particular character in the text. Often used in first-person narration or extensive dialogue. Holden Caulfield's voice in "The Catcher in the Rye" (J.D.
What is authorial voice?Show answer
The signature recognisable across an author's works. Hemingway's spare declarative voice across his novels and stories; Henry James's elaborate qualified voice.
What is narrator voice?Show answer
The voice of the narrating instance in a particular work. May be distinct from authorial voice and from character voice. In limited third-person fiction, narrator voice often hovers between authorial and character.
What is confusing voice with point of view?Show answer
Point of view is the narrative position (first, third, etc.). Voice is the distinctive signature within that position.
What is inconsistent voice?Show answer
A character whose vocabulary shifts radically across the text without dramatic motivation.
What is imposing the author's voice on every character?Show answer
Characters should sound different from each other.