Language and style in The Gruffalo

Abstract

This article studies the popular children’s book The Gruffalo (1999) written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Its popularity is attested to by the fact that the book has sold over 13.5 million copies and has been translated into more than 80 different languages. The question that this article seeks to address is, to what extent has the language and style of The Gruffalo played a part in these commercial and cultural achievements? The article primarily explores the phenomena of meter, rhyme, rhythm and lexical repetition from interrelated linguistic and stylistic perspectives. It also brings these findings into a dialogue with some of the precepts and principles from both classical rhetoric and modern orality theory, especially pertaining to memory and delivery. Having weighed the linguistic evidence, the supposition is put forward that it is highly probable that the motivated language choices that have been made by the author, and the way those choices have been arranged and deployed in the story, have played a substantial role in the book’s success.