The Role of Function in the Fashioning of the Style: A Comparative Study

Mostafa Rezaei Deil
Ph.D. in Persian Language and Literature
Introduction
The function that a writer imagines for his/her literary work is a very influential factor in fashioning the style of the work. As such, with a different function, a similar content may lead to the production of literary works that, from a stylistic point of view, are totally different. In the present study, the styles of two texts are analyzed and the relationship between their stylistic traits with their intended functions is also taken into account. The two books are Nora Gaydos’s Mr. Monkey’s Friend, which is a children’s story, and Nasser Keshavarz’s Mr. Moni and Mrs. Joni which is an Iranian adaptation of the former book. The book Ape Date, which is called in this research by the title of its Persian translation, Mr. Monkey’s Friend, has 12 pages, the first of which presents the educational objectives of the book and the last of which presents a few questions about the story. Keshavarz has written his “tale-songs”, a collection of 12 volumes, based on some of the books in the collection “Now I’m Reading” written by Gaydos and illustrated by B.B. Sams.
 
Methodology, Review of Literature and Purpose of the Study
The study of the style of literary works has a long history in Persian language. In the field of children’s literature, too, there are some books and articles in which stylistic studies can be found.
Although the two books selected for this study have similar contents, one of them is in English and written for the English audience and the other one is in Persian and intended for the Persian audience; therefore, this study can be regarded as a comparative study, too. The researcher tries to compare the two children’s books that have similar plots and illustrations in order to show how different objectives and functions in the minds of the two writers has led to the creation of totally different styles.
 
Discussion
A close look at Gaydos’s book reveals that it has very few words; each page contains an illustration accompanied by only 2 to 11 words; and with the help of the illustrations, these few words and sentences narrate a very simple story. Therefore, one can consider the book a picture book. In this book, what the text narrates remains at the level of a very simple plot, since the words do not focus on the details of the scenes and conflicts and the narrative is mainly presented by the illustrations. The limited number of words are repeated in different pages of the book and most of them have phonetic order and rhythm.
Nora Gaydos’s book can be called an easy-to-read storybook because it has a plot. This is the plot of Gaydos’s book: the grey monkey bakes a cake and waits for his friend for some time; Then, he eats the cake alone. Afterwards, his friend arrives.” The plot of the book Mr. Moni, Mrs. Joni is the same. Keshavarz remains faithful to the main plot of the story but creates a verse tale by adding details about characters, incidents, scenes and other elements of the story.
What Keshavarz intends as the ultimate functions of his book are “helping the mental growth of children, and improving their memory and language learning” beside making a happy and enjoyable time for the children. To achieve these objectives, he has written a verse tale which has these stylistic traits: sentences with neat syntax and close to the spoken language without the dislocation of grammatical parts, the use of simple and colloquial language and expressions, the presence of a delicate humor along with various types of word rhythms including internal and external music. Interacting with each other, these stylistic traits have created a verse tale which attracts children greatly and invites them to read or listen to it several times while having a happy time. The vocabulary is also relatively extensive and varied but simple and is suitable for children’s level of understanding. These traits improve the mental and linguistic abilities of children and help them to memorize this rhythmic story without any obligation, and then reproduce it from their memory. This not only helps the mental growth of children, but also improves their memory and is in line with the objectives mentioned by the writer.
 
Conclusion
Although the main plots of the two books are the same, one of the main stylistic characteristics of Keshavarz’s Mr. Moni, Mrs. Joni, is the attention to details. This distinguishes it from Gaydos’s book and produces a more complete, mature and fluent story than the simple and elementary book by Gaydos. Keshavarz’s book is not a picture book like Geydos’s; rather, it is an illustrated storybook. Ape Date is a story in an educational collection that is intended to make young kids familiar with long vowels in English language with the help of simple stories. By asking some simple questions about the story and the consonantal words, the writer tries to make the audience engaged with the story and persuade him/her to find the consonantal words in the text and make sentences with them in order to comprehend them completely.
The two books are very different from each other in their story-telling and linguistic styles and other literary aspects; so much so that Keshavarz’s work can be regarded as a recreation of Gaydos’s book. The comparison of the stylistic characteristics of the two books reveals that the differences in these characteristics need to be understood in the context of their writer’s objectives and their functions.