High vs. Low Speech

 I am really, really tired of reading stupid conspiracy theories on Tumblr about how Amazon is bribing critics for good reviews for Rings of Power or something, so I’m not much on Tumblr Friday night other than answering Fun Fact Friday asks while listening to Tyler Bates. 

I had this idea for a Note, and I was between this and talking about tactics in Brisingr (and the Inheritance Cycle as a whole). That’s not off the table entirely, but I feel like I’ve been reading/watching too many things on military history so to help take a break from that I’m going to expand a bit on the idea I mentioned in the last Note on fantasy and tone. Specifically, when it comes to dialogue.

I expect this to come out as a horrible mess, I’m sorry, but probably typing all of my notes into a coherent essay is maybe too much to ask.

High Speech vs. Low Speech

I talked last week about how much modern fantasy tries to play down its own fantastic-ness (is this a word??), and I touched on the idea of “Whedon-esque” dialogue, and I didn’t know what to call its counterpart, and I wanted to use different terminology, and I settled on “High Speech” and “Low Speech.” I realize these are terms from Stephen King’s Dark Tower and I realize I’m probably not using them correctly, but screw it I’m doing it anyway.

When I talk about High Speech I mean more grandiose and dramatic dialogue. When characters speak eloquently and clearly, but also in a tone that sounds old-fashioned or official. That’s not to say there can’t be humor, insults, or wit, but it’s delivered in a more eloquent way. And it doesn’t mean the character speaking is intelligent either–you and I know plenty of people who can use big words but don’t have anything going on in their heads. But when talking about big things, they’re done seriously, not in a way meant to undermine or question the words being spoken.

When I talk about Low Speech I mean more vernacular. When characters talk in a way more reminiscent of how everyday people talk. This isn’t just slang and swearing, despite what some writers would have you think, it just means that it is meant to sound more natural and commonplace. Characters who use Low Speech aren’t necessarily less intelligent, they’re just not as formal-sounding, and are more likely to interrupt/be interrupted, or choke back words. This is often meant to subvert the seriousness of a situation, or try to bring it down to a more relatable level.

I hope that if this is difficult to understand, this might help: 

-High Speech is how characters like Rupert Giles or T’Challa/Black Panther talk.

-Low Speech is how characters like Buffy Summers or Tony Stark talk. 

…I might use these arbitrary labels from now on. And YES I realize that this is completely arbitrary but it’s my own personal characterization so I don’t care! Deal with it!

The Original Trilogy of Star Wars is used as an example of a modern story in High Speech. But alternatively–think of something like the movie 300 or Pacific Rim. The latter, in particular, has grand statements like, “Today we are canceling the apocalypse!” and it’s played 100% straight. There’s some silliness in a couple of subplots, but overall, you are meant to take this story and its dialogue completely seriously. Likewise, 300 is trying to be an epic story about the fate of the world in this one battle, as told by a Spartan soldier who lived through it.

[Zack Snyder in general prefers High Speech, I think.]

Dune? Also Dune is High Speech for sure.

Marvel movies tend to go for Low Speech (with the exception of Thor and a select few other characters) which fits with the way that Marvel Comics tends to be perceived–as a company that tries to make its heroic characters more relatable to everyday audiences. Whedon in general prefers Low Speech, and to be clear he can be pretty dramatic with it–Firefly is chalk full of it and while it has humor, it’s also a pretty serious story about war survivors under an oppressive government.

I want to note that Thor, even though the tone of his movies leans towards Low Speech, his dialogue is still more stacked towards High Speech. That being said, it’s done in a way that makes him sound more pompous than serious, using grandiose speech to make himself look like a fool and prove that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, such as in the joke about the brain being a muscle (a joke Taika Waititi thought was so funny, he used it twice: in the “Team Thor” short and in Thor: Ragnarok).

[Which isn’t to say that new!Thor is completely stupid! He’s not–as we see him get the one-up on his enemies more than once. But him trying to sound smart is almost always played for laughs.]

You can kind of tell when an author doesn’t know which they’re using or how to switch between them. One of things that minorly bugs me about the Inheritance Cycle, especially the early books, is that there are times when Paolini can’t seem to decide which he’s using. Eragon, upon being told he’s going to be in a romance with a noble woman, says something like, “But I am but a humble farm boy” which is not… something a farm boy would say to himself. There’s also the repeated use of ‘Aye’ in Eldest which starts to get grating, especially in the scenes in Ellesmera where Eragon is learning with the overly formal elves–saying ‘Aye’ felt jarring, and I know that I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.

Something that interests me is how these two types of speeches can interact with each other in the same work. If you’ve watched The Sandman on Netflix you’ll notice how Morpheus talks in a much more formal way than all of the mortals he talks to (getting the dialogue and the intonation of the dialogue right was apparently a lot of work for the actor). Neil Gaiman is fond of this idea too–many of his books deal with normal modern day people coming into the supernatural worlds and interacting with supernatural characters. Neverwhere is a very good example of this.

Not enough space to get into everything I want to say on this topic, but this scene in the fifth season of Supernatural is also a REALLY good example, and one that sticks out to me, in that Dean is Low Speech and Lucifer is High Speech, but it’s still very dramatic and well-done. So it’s very disappointing that by the end of the season, Lucifer’s talking in Low Speech and pop culture references, just like every other character.

[I have a lot of thoughts about this scene out of nowhere for some reason, and I considered doing a Note about it, and talking about the subtext of the types of dialogue, the acting, the setting, the costume design…UGH, remember when Supernatural was good sometimes? Anyway.]

For that matter, the series I’m pulling this from, Dark Tower, uses this pretty well. Roland, the gunslinger, uses High Speech, but the characters he pulls from our world (or a world very much like it) tend towards Low Speech–at first. As they train to be gunslingers, they slip more into High Speech, especially during serious moments.

When this contrast is done badly, it sticks out because it’s undermining the seriousness of the situation, or doesn’t seem to understand the setting very well. Something that bugs me with The Witcher stories is that almost everyone is using Low Speech–vernacular, swearing, and vulgar expressions–even for characters who shouldn’t be. Royals are as likely to start cursing as much as any other character, and not just in private conversation with their close friends and family. The High Speech is reserved for characters like the Aen Elle elves, and there it’s mostly to make them sound aloof and pretentious; not a bad goal, but surely SOMEONE other than the otherworldly invaders has some decorum?

Likewise, you have something like… most of Supernatural, in which the formal language is only used by beings like angels, and even then it’s spottily applied. Sometimes it works–early episodes with Castiel come to mind–but for the most part, the writers switch too often to pop culture references and slang when they get tired of trying to sound too otherworldly. And hardly any of the demons sound anything but modern.

Switching between the two should be noticeable, and should contrast characters well so they sound different in how they talk. When you do that, you get a story that sounds like the idea you’re trying to convey: a character interacting with another world that’s different or above their own. That can be used for characters talking to others literally from another world, or from a social class higher than themselves. If you only want to stick to Low Speech, you probably shouldn’t be involving otherworldly beings or traditional royalty in your story to begin with.

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