META: Some Thoughts on Problems in Characterization in Serial Literature

[Jamie Rosen]

On Aug 9, 5:14 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Aug 9, 4:04 pm, Tom Russell <milos_par... at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > The second problem with the speech pattern fallacy is that, to be
> > frank, in my personal experience, most people don't have "speech
> > patterns".  
>
> Yes they do, Tom, yes they do, and not only do different people talk
> different ways (going beyond their accent or their vocabulary but also
> their choice of grammar and overall tone of voice) but individual
> people talk differently under different circumstances.

I hate to say this, but I agree with Martin. *rimshot*

Working in a job where I talk to dozens upon dozens of different
people per day, without the benefit of any physical cues (telephone
customer support), I see a lot of speech patterns. Some of them appear
to be cultural (statements that sound like questions due to
intonation), and some of them appear to be individual (calling
everyone, regardless of gender, "Hon" and "Honey".)