Literary Stylistics

Need & Importance

The term stylistics is employed in a variety of
senses by linguists. In a wider interpretation, it is
every kind of synchronic variation in language
other than what can be ascribed to differences
of Regional Dialect.
At its narrowest interpretation, it refers to
linguistic analysis of texts; any texts, newspaper,
legal, religious and Literary texts.
One of the aims of Stylistics is to identify those
features of a text that give it its individual stamp
and mark it as work of particular genre or
author.
Another aim is to identify the linguistic features
of the text that produce a certain aesthetic
response in a reader.
Stylistics is the study of devices in languages
such as (rhetorical figures and syntactical
patterns) that are considered to produce
expressive or literary style.
• Style has been an object of study since ancient
times. Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian treated
style as the proper adornment of thought.
• The traditional idea of Style comes from
Charles Balley ( 1865-1947) , the Swiss
language expert, Style in language arises from
the possibility of choice, among the
alternative forms of expressions.
• Schopenhauer defines Style as the
physiognomy of the mind.
• No matter how calculatingly choices may be
made, a writer’s style will bear the mark of his
personality. An experienced writer is able to
rely on the power of his habitual choices of
sounds, words and syntactic patterns to
convey his personality or fundamental
outlook.
• Stylisticians have a different goal from that of
literary critics. They are concerned with the
text as it exists in its own right and also with
the communicative dynamics contained in it.
In other words, what devices or propensities of
language give it its unique effect. Therefore, the
given text of any genre, newspaper, legal,
religious, poem or prose speaks of its unique
linguistic characteristics.
Style is seen as mark of Character. The Count de
Buffon’s famous epigram : Style is the man
himself.
• The main task of Stylistician is three fold:
• He must identify the entire range of linguistic
features which people intuitively feel to be
stylistically significant, and specify a precise
way of talking about them ( Metalanguage).
• He must out line a method of analysis which
allow us to organize these features in such a
way as to facilitate comparison of one use of
language with any other.
• He must decide the function of these features ,by
classifying them into categories based on the kind
of extra linguistic purpose they have.
• At the outset, the Stylistician notices the linguistic
features that he feels to be stylistically significant.
• The Stylistician ideally knows three ideally knows
three things which linguistically untrained people
do not: he is aware of the kind of structure
language has; and thus the kind of feature which
might be expected to be stylistically significant;
• He is aware of the kind of social variation
which linguistic features tend to be identified
with; and he has a technique of putting those
features down on the paper in the systematic
way to display their internal patterning to
maximum effect.
• With the paradigm shift from traditional
grammar-translation method to a search for
authentic material for teaching language,
linguists seriously considered the possibility of
exploiting literary discourse in the classroom.
• This renewed interest in literature led to the
merger of linguistics and literary criticism
which resulted in birth of new discipline of
Stylistics and especially Literary Stylistics.
• Stylistic Analysis not only helps the reader/
analyst to appreciate the anatomy and function
of literary language, it also uncovers the
subtleties of a writer’s craftsmanship and
excellence of technique.
• Toolan (1998) maintains that Stylistics attempts
to understand the techniques or craftsmanship of
writing by answering questioning such as why a
particular word choice , clause pattern , rhtyhm ,
intonation, contextual implication , cohesive links
, choices of voice, perspective and transitivity are
used and what desired effects have been
achieved through them.
• In other words, literary stylistics studies
literary discourse from a linguistic point of
view and thus, it impinges on the domain of
literary criticism on one hand and linguistics
on the other.
• That is why Widdowson(1975) deems it a
means of linking two and contends:
• One can conduct enquiries of a linguistic kind
without any reference to literary criticism and
one can conduct enquiries in literary criticism
without any reference to linguistics.
• Thus both linguistics and literary criticism are
subsumed in a new autonomous discipline.
While appreciating literature , a literary critic
might also use his knowledge of psychology,
history, sociology and the development of
ideas to interpret the text being studied.
• A linguist contrary to critic’s approach,
concentrates on the choice of words, syntactic
structure, deviations and conceptual
connotation of words by dissecting a text even
to the level of morphemes .
• By combining such a minute analysis with aesthetic
evaluation, a Stylistician reconciles these diverse
disciplines through his mediatory role. It also enables
one to judge how skillfully the writer has executed his
work through the effective tool of language.
• Stylistics is the logical extension of practical criticism.
They try to dig out not just what a text means but also
how it comes to mean what it does. Even a text seems
to be obscure and deviant , a Stylistician tries to unfold
the textual obscurity through the canons of linguistics
to comprehend its coherent pattern at the syntactic ,
semantic, phonological or lexical level .
• Instead of making sweeping generalizations,
about the abstract features of a difficult
literary text , a Stylistician offers concrete
evidence of cohesion and coherence from
within the text itself.