Death of a Salesman

Brooklyn cadence, contractions, intensifiers ('absolutely,' 'magnificent'), trail-offs that signal the gap between confidence and reality. Uses hyperbole constantly — 'the greatest country in the world,' 'he could be anything.'

A man performing a class identity he has not achieved. His language aspires to authority but is built on repetition rather than evidence. The gap between his grandiose claims and his fragmented syntax is the play's central irony.

Shifts between Willy's idiom (when performing the role of son) and blunter, less adorned speech (when telling the truth). His most honest lines are grammatically simple: 'I am not a leader of men.'

Biff's code-switching is the play's most hopeful element — he can step outside the Loman idiom. The directness of his truth-telling register suggests a man who, if he can escape the myth, can exist authentically.

Confident, forward-looking, optimistic to the point of vacancy. Uses future tense almost exclusively in promises he will never keep. Copies Willy's verbal tics without their emotional weight.

Happy is the dream without the suffering — the performed confidence without the underlying cost. He has inherited Willy's language and none of Willy's capacity for grief. He is the American Dream's most cheerful victim.

Complete sentences, no hyperbole, careful qualification. The only character who does not inflate or deflate. When she rises to oratory in the 'attention must be paid' speech, it reads as an eruption — the controlled voice finally insisting.

Linda's careful language reflects a woman who has processed the truth Willy cannot face. Her restraint is not passivity — it is the verbal equivalent of holding the house together.

Declarative, aphoristic, devoid of hesitation. Never asks questions. Never doubts. Speaks in epigrams that sound like wisdom and contain no actual guidance.

The idealized masculine authority that Willy has constructed in memory. Ben's certainty is a projection of what Willy needed his brother to be. The fact that Ben's advice is useless is the point — the model Willy has worshipped cannot be followed.

Casual, unimpressed, direct. Uses working-class idiom without apology. Never inflates anything. His elegy uses 'dast' (dialect for 'dare') and working-class sentence structure deliberately.

Charley is the ordinary life that works precisely because it makes no claims. His speech is proof that the working-class idiom Willy uses to perform grandeur is capable — without modification — of genuine dignity.

Corporate casual — first names, deflecting pleasantries, apologetic firmness. Modern, comfortable with technology, comfortable with dismissal. No dramatics.

The new American business class: professionally managed, personally absent, completely without malice and completely without accountability. Howard doesn't need to be cruel. The system does it for him.