Feature 1

A key stylistic feature is the way the central noun ' fog' is elaborated (or perhaps more accurately, 'un-elaborated') throughout the passage. It is a resource of grammar that nouns commonly enter into combinations with other words so that any particular or special quality they possess can be identified and picked out. Thus, in a phrase like 'the thick grey fog nearby', the grammatical slots around the word "fog' are filled up by a determiner ('the'}, two adjectives ('thick grey') and an adverb ('nearby'). However, none of the available slots are thus filled in the passage and this marked absence of grammatical modification makes the central noun, " fog', emerge as stark, undifferentiated and (literally) undetermined. Its characterless quality is reinforced by compar­ison, in that many other nouns in the passage receive precisely this sort of grammatical modification: eg. 'green aits ', 'waterside pollutions' and 'a great (and dirty) city'.

Feature 2

A popular interpretation of this passage is to see it as a text with 'no verbs'. This is not strictly accurate, however, because only in the first three sentences and in part of sentence (5) have verbs been excised completely. In any case, there are plenty of verbs in the numerous subordinate clauses in the passage. A more rigorous stylistic description would therefore stipulate that the passage displays a restricted verbal development in its main clauses. In the opening sentences, the Predicator element has been ellipsed completely, and this takes with if all sense of verbal process. Later in the passage, from sentence (4), part of the Predicator element is offered, but signif­icantly, one key element is omitted. This element, known as the finite, is often expressed by auxiliary verbs and it serves to provide, among other things, tense, polarity and grammatical agreement with the Subject. By offering only the main verbal component in 'lying', 'creeping' and 'pinching', Dickens effectively splits the Predicator in two so that we get a sense of ongoing process, but no indication of tense. In the sequence "Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs', 'Fog' is Subject but the absence of a finite verbal particle creates problems in choosing a tense for the tag:

Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs [wasn't it?/isn't it?] Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs, [so it is/so it was]

So while these clause patterns indicate both a basic verbal process and the location of that process, they offer no indication of tense, a consequence of which is that it is difficult to establish a time frame for the events narrated. Whereas the fog's omnipresence in the spatial context is well grounded, there is little sense of concrete anchoring in the corresponding temporal context.

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