Language style on Michael Druce’s ‘Les Misérables’ Play

A style in language is the manner of expressing whatever is expressed. Language styles is used by people to express their idea between in written and spoken form. Language styles can be different according to the situation, area, social status, and counterparts. A text of drama as a kind of language used in society is an interesting object to be analyzed since it is unique form of language in usage that differs from the other one in this matter the peformance or orally. So that the writer concern to the language style used in Michael Druce’s Les Misserable play script. This study is purposed to find out the type of language style used by Michael Druce to show the characters’ language style, how it is applied to the characters.

The design of this study is descriptive qualitative. It describes language styles used by Michael Druce to show some characters inside the play. The data are the characters’ utterances, that is found in each scenes. It is characters’ dialogues between one to anothers. The data is from Les Miserable play by Michael Druce. The data that are collected from each scene will be classified in five kind of language style as proposed by Martin Joos (1962 and
1967), they are frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate style. Furtermore, after it has been classified based on each language styles characteristics, it will be explained about how language style be applied in the dialogues.

The finding of this study show that there are three kinds of language styles was found. They are formal, consultative, and casual style. Each language style that is found in different kinds of situation, and uttered by different characters. The use of casual style is very often, it show the closeness between characters, and usually used in relaxed ocassion such as talking with the family members and friends. Consulatative style is used in two-way participation, it usually used in negotiating. It also happened between strangers in trade and the other occasion that need negotiation. Formal style is the last style that is found in the play. The ocassion usually formal, like in the courtroom. This also used as respect expression to honour the adressee. This style show some background level or the purpose behind the utterances, for example for makingsome implession.