Stylistics

First paragraph

Stylistics is a sub-discipline of linguistics. In simple words, stylistics is concerned

with ‘the study of style in language’ (Verdonk, 2014,). The common meaning of style in everyday
usage is understood as a

distinct design of something or a specific way of doing something. We may refer

to someone’s elegant style of dressing or old-fashioned style of a house or a piece

of furniture. Similarly, style in a language may be used by the speakers or writers

in a specific manner. However, in stylistics, we are not just concerned with what

makes the style as distinct, but also why it is distinct, what purpose it is made to

fulfil, and what effect it can have on the listeners or readers. With this

understanding, we can reach a general definition by Peter Verdonk, who defines

stylistics or ‘the study of style’ as ‘the analysis of distinctive expression in language

and the description of its purpose and effect’ (2014, p. 4).

The word style originates from the Latin word stilus, which means

stake, instrument for writing, manner of writing, mode of expression. Today

there exist about 100 definitions of style. In contemporary language studies,

this word is used to implement the concepts of various spheres of human

knowledge, activities and realia. The proof of it lies in its extremely wide

combinability: the style of speech, the style of a writer, newspaper style, the

style of a textbook, folk style, classical style, empire style, baroque style,

modern style, sublime style, the style of clothing, leadership style, etc. This

term is used in linguistics to describe the choices which language makes

available to a user, beyond the ones needed for a meaning expression. Style

has been approached from various angles by different scholars. Owing to its
 complexity and scope, some of them resort to the definition of distinct

concepts. For example, K. Dolinin defines it as a general semiotic notion,

style as a linguistic concept, style as a property of expression (text style)

and distinguishes four types of stylistics: stylistics of language or descriptive stylistics, functional
stylistics, stylistics of individual speech and

stylistics of perception [6, p. 168]

Second paragraph

Taken together, all these arguments demonstrate that style is central to the study of

stylistics. The word style refers to the choice of words/expressions in a given context by a

given person, for a given purpose, and so on. Thus, studies in style have shown that style

is “the selection and arrangement of linguistic features which are open to choice” (De

Vito, 1967), Often times, the author’s identity is given away by some details reflecting,

habit of expression or thought, and these seem to confirm that each writer has a linguistic

‘thumb-print’, an individual combination of linguistic habits which somehow betrays him

in all that he writes. Accordingly, a writer’s idiosyncratic way of expressing himself or

herself is an offshoot of his or her personality. Crystal and Davy (1983) opine that style is

the “effectiveness of a mode of expression”.

Style may be said to relate to communicative performance, which is the demonstration of

the speaker’s or writer’s language capacity in generating and understanding specific

communicative contexts. Stylistics therefore is the study of style. But style itself, by its

nature, is a subject of debate.

Since its emergence as a significant academic field within the scope of linguistics in the

1960s, stylistics has continued to attract intellectual attention of varying degrees. Several

meanings and theories of stylistics exist in linguistic scholarship (Crystal and Davy,

1969, Fowler, 1975 and Wales, 2001 etc.). While some see stylistics as a branch of

linguistics that deals with the study of varieties of language, its properties, principles
 behind choice, dialogue, accent, length and register (Bradford, 1979 and Downes, 1998),

others insist that it attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular

[style] choices used by individuals and social groups in their use of language (Turner,

1973, Birch, 1995 and Fowler, 1998 etc.) Stylistics is not only closely connected with other
branches of linguistics,

namely phonetics, grammar, lexicology, semasiology, but also with such

disciplines as literature, psychology, logics, information theory, sound

symbolism and many others.

Third paragraph

There are several views and perspectives towards stylistics as provided by various

experts in the domain. Predominantly as a method of linguistic analysis, it emerged

as an approach to study literature. In this regard, it is also labelled as ‘Literary

Linguistics’. According to Widdowson (2013), stylistics is meant to provide

‘linguistic orientation’ to literary discourse (p. 3), while in Toolan’s (2013, p. viii)

view it is the ‘study of the language in literature’. This view of the approach makes

use of linguistic analysis to serve literary traditions. The author of a literary work

may choose a distinctive style of language to achieve a particular purpose or to

create a particular artistic effect on the readers. This can be done by the choice of

certain ‘forms’ and ‘structures’ over the others which may stand out from the rest.

For example, certain sounds or stress patterns in a poem may be preferred over the

others to create the intended effect. Similarly, certain grammatical patterns such as

phrase structures can be preferred to have a particular effect. In this manner, the

readers and critics may be able to recognize what has been used to create their

interest or affect their emotions and what has been left out. The deviation from the

commonly used forms is one way of achieving that particular artistic effect that

may interest those who study style. The literary critic may use stylistics to study

those markers of style that are adopted by an author for a particular impact on the

readers.
 Literature is primarily the product of language. It can have varying purposes such

as to express and evoke certain emotions, to amuse, to preach, and to bring

reformations and so on. This can be achieved through various forms and structures

or in other words genres. So, literary authors may be interested in writing drama,

novel or poetry. In addition, these are works of imagination, which may have ‘a

quality beyond the use of words to convey referential meaning’ (Chapman, 1973, p. 3). This use
of language would be somehow less than and loosely distinct from

‘everyday’ and ‘normal’language use (ibid).

These definitional perspectives might be helpful in providing some insights into the

issues discussed further in this unit. Stylistics, being a sub-discipline of linguistics,

makes use of theoretical and methodological depth of linguistics for describing the

patterns of language use in literary texts crafted to achieve specific artistic effects. Texts and
their functions

Therefore, stylistics helps in describing or explaining a particular literary text. It

can explain the principles underlying the choices made by the writer/author of the text. As
explained earlier, the goal of stylistic analysis is to study the style of a text,

which can be further used to achieve the following:

1. The analysis of a literary work can be aimed to showcase the individualistic

style of an author through which the writer stands out and is known for that

peculiar style. Writers may possess or adopt a unique style that may reflect

their individual idiosyncrasies. Famous authors are known for their

individualistic style such as Shakespearean style or style of Charles Dickens.

It is difficult to identify all features of an author’s works but the focus of

analysis can pertain to the identification and interpretation of peculiar and

salient aspects of an author’s style.

2. It can be used to highlight the choices made by an author to make a text stand

out or reflect the requirements of a domain. A text can be made different

through some drastic deviations from the norms of language and genre. The
 deviations can be studied by making comparisons with commonly used genre

conventions and language varieties to see how an author makes his/her work

noticeable. 3. The style could also be analyzed to point to the times to which a text belongs

and can be used to highlight certain characteristics peculiar to that time such

as the Victorian era or style of Old English. This type of analysis accounts for

the features common to a particular group of people at a particular point in

time. Careful attention is required in this regard to the selection criteria in

order to generalize language habits to that particular group.

4. A stylistic analysis maybe conducted to highlight the use of language in a

particular social context or situation. Instead of exploring the peculiarities of

language use, this type of analysis focuses more on the effectiveness of the

language used. It aims to analyze how well a text fulfils its intended purpose

through the careful choice of language forms and structures.

As mentioned earlier, the analysis of style includes discovering the purpose or

effect of a text. The texts that we frequently encounter in our everyday lives include

newspapers, magazines, or a menu. One of the features on the basis of which we

can recognize texts is their text type or genre. The uses of language for some

specific purpose, such as for academic lecture or news broadcasting, require

recurrence of certain features over a period of time, thus determining their genre

and having a specific ‘style’. This requires the use of certain features of language

more than others within the texts formulated for these purposes. It is easier for us, and is part
of our everyday knowledge, to understand the purpose of a genre due toits recognizable social
function(s). Social events fulfill social purposes. The events

may make use of language and may have a distinct structure. For example, the

purpose of a newspaper story is to inform the readers about some significant event,

or a menu is to make the customer buy food out of the available variety of options.

A non-linguist can pick up these features through intuition whereas linguists

analyze these features through some modes of description (Chapman, 1973) as

 provided by the methods of stylistics. It may be noted however that the occurrence

and use of such features may vary with a particular context and situation.

Probably one of the significant developments in the field is a movement from strict

adherence to the analysis of literary texts to all types of texts for stylistic analysis.

Not all texts requiring linguistic analysis may have significance due totheir literary

effects. Some texts may require some systematic way to study style to meet more

practical or ideological concerns. For example, some texts may be well known forcreating a
persuasive impact on its audience or for propagating certain ideologies

to control their audience. Therefore, both literary, as well as non-literary texts, can

be used for stylistic analysis (Jeffries and McIntyre, 2010). Depending upon the

focus of analysis, the term literary stylistics is used for the analysis of literary texts

whereas linguistic stylistics is used for the analysis of non-literary texts (Jeffries

and McIntyre, 2010). Other than the focus on the kind of texts, the difference also

lies in the way analysis is approached. While the term linguistic stylistics is used

distinctively to interpret a literary text in the light of linguistic techniques, the goals

of linguistic stylistics, however, are also aimed towards some contribution to the

linguistic theory or linguistic model used. Most of the approaches are focused on a

combination of these goals. This book also takes this approach towards the analysis

of texts, where both the literary and non-literary texts are considered as worthy of

stylistic analysis.

Stylistics is often regarded as a linguistic approach to literature – and

understandably so, since the majority of stylistic attention so far has been

devoted to literary texts. In actual fact, however, the range of discourses

that stylisticians are currently engaged with has expanded considerably to

include non-fictional forms such as advertising, academic writing, news

reports as well as non-printed forms such as TV and pictorial advertising,

film, multimodal publications, etc. With its base in linguistics, stylistics is

 (ideally) characterized by an informed, systematic, retrievable, and (usually

also) contextual analysis, which is rigorous, consistent and open to falsifica-

tion. Because of the ‘scientific’ nature of linguistics as compared to otherfields in the

humanities, the stylistic approach to text analysis may seem

more objective than other branches of literary criticism. It is important to

note, however, that in spite of stylisticians’ concern with rigour, no stylistic

analysis can be totally objective, but it will always be influenced by a myriad

of factors, such as the stylistician’s individual preferences and foci, as well as

the linguistic paradigm employed for analysis or the chosen methodology.

Notwithstanding this reservation, stylistics has proved itself to provide use-

ful tools and methods which allow its practitioners to conduct informed

analyses of the ways in which meaning is created in texts by linguistic means.

Stylistics is interdisciplinary in scope – most obviously so by its bringing

together linguistics and literary studies. Yet, the eclectic claims of the field

have furthermore allowed views borrowed from disciplines such as philoso-

phy, cultural theory, sociology, history and psychology to find their way into

the stylistic analyses of literature. While sometimes criticized for its interdis-

ciplinariness, stylistics has been praised by others for its interdisciplinary

character which is considered one of the advantages and inspiring poten-

tials of the approach