Personal Attitude Involvement and Emotion - Summary of Styles:

The style of a text is shaped by the ways in which the attitude of the speaker or writer gets into verbal structures s/he uses, their emotional involvement or detachment, their point of view or ideology. Referring to the same individual one person might say lout or hooligan the next might say demonstrator, protestor or

activist. In each saving, we can see the differences in attitude, emotional coloring, and personal involvement and general forcefulness. This kind of differences is called a difference of tenor (the general meaning).

The differences between homosexual, and gay are differences in tenor and such difference of attitude of life and society are also ideological. Tenor is also expressed through the function words. Margaret Thatcher uses ‘you’ and words like ‘have to’ in her speech. ‘You’ is used in we are talking to someone directly but in the Thatcher’s passage ‘you’ is not used addressing the interview. So, ‘you’ can be used as a synonym for every pronoun differently.

The use of ‘you’

Let us look the examples of using ‘you’. So you have to be strong to your own people, and yes you have got to be strong on law and order. In these sentences ‘you’ could mean ‘the good environment’ or it could refer to ‘the leader of the government’ or whoever is in the power. ‘You’ conveys a friendly tenor and draws the audience into a familiar kind of solidarity by blurring (disobey) the distinction between ‘I’ the speaker and ‘You’ the audience.

The use of ‘have to’, ’got to’, ‘can’t’, or ‘should’

The similar strategy can be seen in the use of words such as have to, got to, must, can, can’t or should. Grammatically, these words are all similar and like ‘be’.

1. Indicating necessity: It has to collapse under so much weight.
2. Indicating obligation or compulsion: You have to stop now.
3. Indicating both necessity and obligation: It has to be strong.

In the above examples, assertiveness and opinion are presented as common sense, necessity and need.