Style-shift in Harry Potter Series

ABSTRAK Language utilized in a novel series entitled Harry Potter seems to shift along with the advance of the stories. The question that appears afterwards is “how does the language in Harry Potter shift?” This question is tried to be answered by using the theory of Stylistics accompanied by its variation the so called style-shifting. Style-shifting in Harry Potter series is scrutinized through the conversational discourse, which is the representation of what others have said (“reported speech”) as dialogue (“direct speech” or “direct quotation”) rather than third-person report (“indirect speech”), and that “direct speech” is more vivid, more effective, utilized by Harry Potter and the types of sentence employed in Harry’s direct speech in the stories. The result of this study shows that the language in Harry Potter novel indeed shifts along with the development of the series. It is seen from the use of conversational discourse and the types of sentence deployed in Harry’s direct speeches. In conversational discourse, the development can be viewed from the use of indirect discourse that progressively changes to direct discourse. It can be seen through the percentage of the conversational discourse utilized. It portrays that Harry’s chances to speak get bigger and bigger along with the advance of the series. In the types of sentence utilized, Harry uses simple sentences in the very beginning of the series; this deployment then shifts to the more complex sentence structures, which are compound and complex sentences, and then to the most complex one that is compound-complex sentence. These shifts are affected by the change of Harry’s experience and environmental factors along with his growth in the story and can be seen through the percentage presented. This study highlights the style shifting of language deployed by the main character in a novel series entitled Harry Potter seen in the utilization of Harry Potter’s conversational discourse and types of sentence Harry uses in his direct speeches. This study has not been perfect. There are still mistakes and errors that need improving. As a consequence, other studies are still necessary to improve the results of this study and the finding about language development in other novels or series so that the knowledge about the issues scrutinized here is improved and updated