Stylistics, a branch of applied linguistics, is the study and interpretation of text of all

types and spoken language in regard to their linguistic and tonal style where style is particular
variety of language used by different individual/ or and different situations or settings. For
example, the vernacular, or everyday language may be used casual friends, whereas more
formal language, with respect to grammar, pronunciation or accent, and lexicon or choice of
words, of often in a cover letter and resume and while speaking during a job interview.

The following are the branches of stylistics;

Decoding stylistics
A comparatively new branch of stylistics is the decoding stylistics, which can be traced back
to the works of L.V. Shcherba, B.A. Larin, M. Riffaterre, R. Jackobson and other scholars of
the Prague linguistic circle. A serious contribution into this branch of stylistic study was also
made by Prof. I.V.Arnold.

Each act of speech has the performer, or sender of speech and the recipient. The former does
the act of encoding and the latter the act of decoding the information.

If we analyze the text from the author’s (encoding) point of view we should consider the
epoch, the historical situation, and personal, political, social and aesthetic views of the author.

But if we try to treat the same text from the reader’s angle of view, we shall have to disregard
this background knowledge and get the maximum information from the text itself (its
vocabulary, composition, sentence arrangement, etc.). The first approach manifests the
prevalence of the literary analysis. The second is based almost exclusively on the linguistic
analysis. Decoding stylistics is an attempt to harmoniously combine the two methods of
stylistic research and enable the scholar to interpret a work of art with a minimum loss of its
purport and message.

Functional stylistics

Functional stylistics is a branch of lingua–stylistics that investigates functional styles, that is

special sublanguages or varieties of the national language such as scientific, colloquial,
business, publicist and so on.

However, many types of stylistics may exist or spring into existence they will all consider the
same source material for stylistic analysis – sounds, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs
and texts. That’s why any kind of stylistic research will be based on the level–forming
branches that include; Stylistics lexicology, Stylistics phonetics, Stylistics grammar, Stylistics
morphology, Stylistics syntax.

Comparative Stylistics

Deals with the contrastive study of more than one language. It analyses the stylistic resources
not inherent in a separate language but at the crossroads of two languages, or two literatures
and is linked to the theory of translation.
 Reference:

Wales, Katie. "A Dictionary of Stylistics." Routledge,1990, New York.

Burke, Michael, editor. "The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics." Routledge,

2014, New York.

Barry, Peter. "Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural

Theory." Manchester University Press, Manchester, New York, 1995.