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Free indirect style

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A narrative technique that blends third-person narration with a character's thoughts and speech patterns, presenting the character's perspective without direct quotation marks

Detailed Definition
A literary device that hybridizes the narrator's voice with a character's internal voice, allowing readers to access a character's thoughts and feelings while maintaining third-person narration. The technique presents the character's consciousness through the narrator's words, creating an intimate yet distanced perspective.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”: “What a lark! What a plunge!” (Clarissa’s thought in narrator’s voice); In poetry: “She walked the shore—how cold the waves seemed!”; Blends character’s voice with narrator’s syntax; Common in dramatic monologues like Browning’s “My Last Duchess”
Additional Notes
Narrative technique blending third-person with character's thoughts. Creates intimate distance in verse narratives. Study with dramatic monologue and persona poems; blurs narrator boundaries.
Also Known As
Free indirect discourse free indirect speech Source
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