Jane Austen's Emma is a comic novel in which talk is a primary indicator of character. At the center of the story Emma Woodhouse gradually moves toward maturity and self-understanding through a process of making a series of misjudgments about other people and then awakening to her own blindness to their true characters. Throughout the novel Emma reacts the characters around her and, usually, the reader sees something in their speech that Emma either does not see or willfully misreads. Many of the characters employ distinctive comic modes of speech that are all their own and, in Austen's carefully arranged scheme, the various types of speech are all designed to evoke particular aspects of Emma's character that are in need of remedy.
This is a novel in which "every movement of thought finds its verbal equivalent in a nuance of speech" and it is Emma's willful misreading, or ignoring, of nuance that causes much of the trouble she brings on herself (Butler 381). The speaking styles of Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Elton, Harriet Smith, Miss Bates, Mrs. Elton, and Frank Churchill are all distinctive and reveal their individual characters clearly--to the reader. Emma, however, hears in them what she wants to hear and makes judgments and plans on the basis of how the speech appears to her--or how she wishes it to appear. The basis of all of Austen's comedy is the way she regards her characters with this type of "ironical amusement" based on the fact that "they never see the situation as it really is and as she sees it" (Bradley 354). The contrast between Emma's blind conceit in believing herself to be capable of managing her whole world and her various approaches to the style and content of the speech of the other characters is the specific source of the comedy in the novel.
There does not have to be any falseness in the characters for Emma to be deceived. Harriet Smith, Miss Bates and Mr. Woodhouse all chatter in a fashion that brings ...