Language

Style of language

Even though the topic of Souvankham Thammavongsa’s short story “How to Pronounce Knife” is very emotional at times, the language is mostly neutral. For instance, the text does not describe Joy’s struggle in emotional terms but simply explains what happens.

As the narrator adopts the perspective of a child, the language is easy to understand. 

The author does not focus on dialogue, but on Joy’s perspective of her environment – the school and her home. Consequently, the language is descriptive and helps readers imagine what Joy experiences: 

The book the child was given had pictures and a few words. The pictures were supposed to explain what was going on with the words, but there was this one word that didn’t have a picture. It was there on the page by itself, and when she pronounced each letter, the word didn’t sound like ...