Post no.2: The Language (p.33)

With financial help from Sophie’s father, Stephen, and support from her friend Jenna, Jit can now begin searching for his friend Sophie. He books his first meeting with Jenna, one of the girls Sophie had travelled to the music festival with.

I have chosen to stop here because I wanted to comment on the way Bali Ray writes, that you notice right away you start reading the book. There is a special dialogue between Jit and some “gangsta wannabe” who shows how Bali Rai chooses to write in rather informal English with a lot of slang:

“She swore at me. At the bar I got served quickly and I turned with two bottles of lager in one hand, only to be faced with the gangsta wannabe.
“You was looking at sumt’ing earlier – what?” he asked me in a high-pitched voice.
“Yer mama,” I said, before attempting to walk away.
Wannabe stood in my way, got all up in my face, as his, hip-hop heroes probably said.
“You wanna watch it, bro – I’ll merk a bwoi fe fun . . .”

(The Angel Collector, 2007. Bali Rai, p. 32-33)

This dialogue is full of slang, and is written with very informal English. I believe this is to make the characters more believable because when the characters talk in the same way you do, you can relate to them in another level than if they would speak formally. He uses a language adapted for the characters and since the main characters are British teenagers he uses a teenage-language with a lot of slang and abbreviations. The book’s target audience is teenagers and therefore Bali Rai writes in a way that fit young people. Bali Ray does not describe the environment much. Instead there are a many dialogues between the characters. I think this is to make the novel more amusing to read and not so tedious.