Style And Language Clueless

Style and Language #

The language is designed to appeal to young people. so it is: casual, informal, intimate

Short cellular phone messages – Cher and Dionne walking down the same corridor conduct a discussion about their respective grades on their cell phones.

Speeches #

– casual, clichéd, grammatically challenged

Sentences - truncated, ellipsis, gibberish?

Slang – secret argot:

scheming Betties, persistent Barneys, loser loadies, go postal, total baldwins

Cher:

It is one thing to spark up a doobie and get laced at parties, but it is quite another to be fried all day.

“As if” used frequently (a signature phrase) – indicates that appearance is not the same as reality – one of the main assertions of Emma and the movie, Clueless.

Cher:

I was surfing the crimson wave. I had to haul ass to the ladies’.

Weasel words: extreme euphemisms:

Dionne: “That was a stop sign!

Cher: “I totally paused.”

Cynical:

Cher:

Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there’s no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value.
Both clever and witty:

On Amber’s attractiveness, Cher replies:

“No, she’s a Monet; looks great from a distance but all spotty close up”.^(1.)

  1. Monet belongs to the post impressionist school of French painters who painted in a spontaneous and luminous style with pure or unmixed colours. Some in the school used Pointillism – a series of pairs of opposite dots of colour spectrum which from a distance blend in a process of “optical mixture”.

On Tai to Elton:

“She looks like one of those Botticelli chicks”

(Sexually attractive - voluptuous) For more info go to: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/botticelli/

Innuendo - Sexual banter:

Amber:

Ms. Stoeger, my plastic surgeon doesn’t want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose.

Dionne:

Well, there goes your social life.