Satyajit Ray’s ‘Bankubabur Bandhu’: A Study of Language Style/ সত্যজিৎ রায়ের ‘বঙ্কুবাবুর বন্ধু’ : ভাষাশৈলী

Abstract

Language is any medium of communication. Through the mastery of language use, a story can be vividly painted in the reader’s mind like a picture. The technique of using language is what we call style. Stylistics is a branch of applied linguistics that analyzes the practical variations of language depending on individuals or situations—for instance, an author’s choice of words, tone, narrative style, grammar, and linguistic patterns.

          Analyzing the language of a narrative at the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic levels of linguistics is what constitutes stylistic analysis of narrative language. The play of language in a narrative can also be revealed through the use of dialects, bilingualism, diglossia, or multilingualism in characters.

         Narrative discourse is of two types: descriptive discourse and dialogic discourse. In descriptive discourse, the narrator speaks directly. In dialogic discourse, the narrator makes characters speak on his behalf. To highlight dialogic discourse, descriptive discourse becomes necessary. Before dialogic discourse, the writer usually inserts short objective declarative sentences, which belong to descriptive discourse. Through these declarative sentences, the writer portrays a character’s physical gestures, manner of speaking, and intonation to the reader via language. This lends additional dimension to the dialogue. In this way, the true nature of each character is revealed.

           In dialogic discourse, the writer presents the main message of the narrative to the reader. In descriptive discourse, the surrounding environment of the story, the behavior of the characters, their state of mind, their attire, and every detail is elaborated. In Satyajit Ray’s short story ‘Bankubabur Bandhu’, the author employs the first-person narrative style, making use of both forms of discourse. In the dialogues of the characters, the themes of diglossia and multilingualism appear from the perspective of sociolinguistics. The story has been made vivid like a picture through the techniques of repetition, special word choice, phrase usage, onomatopoeic expressions, mimetic sounds, and reduplication of words. This article has sought to analyze and demonstrate these aspects.