What is the author's style in Surfacing by Margaret Atwood?

Atwood’s attention to language and meaning consistently appears in her poems and novels, both in terms of how women and men use language, as David and Anna do when they speak of sex and vulgarity for instance, as a precursor to their arguments, and in terms of how groups of people use language and meaning as part of their politics and economics. The characters in this novel also mention in passing, by way of reading signs that suggest “Free Québec,” that Canada and the French-speaking country will one day become separate regions. The Canadian languages play a significant role in this novel for that reason alone.