Stylistics ENG 551

LECTURE 2

Recap Stylistics is the study of style used in literary and verbal language and the effects the writer/speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/listener. Stylistics applies linguistics to literature in the hope of arriving at analyses which are broad, rigorous and objective.

Historical Development of Stylistics

As a discipline, it links literary criticism to linguistics. It does not function independently, but it utilizes the principles of inquiry form both linguistics and literary criticism.

The further development of stylistics was based on the three sources 1. Poetics led to the development of Literary Criticism

3. Rhetoric and 4. Dialectics developed into Stylistics.

Historical Development I. A. Richards and William Empson developed an approach in order to concentrate on the literary texts themselves, and how readers were affected by those texts. This approach is often called Practical Criticism.

It is matched by a similar critical movement in the USA, associated with Cleanth Brooks, called New Criticism.

Historical Development Modern stylistics has its roots in Russian Formalism of the early twentieth century.

Stylistics can trace its roots to the formalist tradition that developed in Russian literary Criticism at the turn of the 20th century. Roman Jakobson’s work focused on poetic language and the study of its formal qualities.

What is Stylistics?Nature, Scope & Significance of Stylistics

Stylistics is a critical method that analyzes literary works on the basis of style. Its practitioners focus on analyzing a writer’s stylistic choices with regard to Diction/ Vocabulary, Syntax, Phonology, Figurative language.

In analyzing literary works stylisticians explore topics whether writes use everyday speech or elevated language, whether they use periodic or loose syntaxes, whether they employ predominantly visual or auditory imagery.

Nature of Stylistics

“Stylistics is a linguistic approach to literature, explaining the relationship between language and artistic function, with motivating questions such as ‘why’ and ‘How’ more than ‘What’ ”

Geoffery Leech “Style in Fiction : A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry”

Relationship between Language & Artistic Function

LANGUAGE Communicative / Utilitarian Purposes

To convey ideas, to inform etc

ARTISTIC FUNCTION Aesthetic functions

Writers’ urge to creative expression

Readers need to feel pleasure through reading

Nature of Stylistics Stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between the form and effect within a particular variety of language. Therefore Stylistics looks at what is “going on” within the language, what the linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals.

Form Effect

Style Meaning

Nature of Stylistics Other feature of stylistics include :

• the use of dialogue, including regional accents and people’s dialects, descriptive language

• the use of grammar such as the active voice or passive voice

• the distribution of sentence length

• the use of particular language registers.

Nature of Stylistics Stylistics is the scientific study of style. Because it follows an objective methodology, namely retracing or recovering the process of text production (i.e. the intention of the writer) starting form the clues left in text as product, which sets it apart form other less scientific methods of text analysis (Short, 1996)

Scope & Significance

David Lodge in “Language of Fiction” argues: It is impossible to paraphrase literary writings, to translate literary works or to divorce the general appreciation of a literary work form the appreciation of its style, for the inevitable loss of the hidden, metaphorical meaning.

Scope of Stylistics Stylistics is the study of style used in literary and verbal language and the effects the writer/ speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/listener.

It attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language such as socialization, the production and reception of meaning, literary criticism and critical discourse analysis.

Scope Stylistics can tell us how to name constituent part of a literary text and enables us to document their operations, but in doing so it must draw upon the terminology and methodology of multiple disciplines, e.g. the study of meter, narrative and dialogue.

The study of fundamental units and principle of all linguistic usage: Phonemes, grammatical classes, forms of syntactic organization, rhythmic sequences etc.

Scope “ Linguistics is not and will never be the whole of literary analysis , and only the literary analyst –not the linguist—can determine the place of linguistics in literary studies. But if a text is to be described at all, then it should be described properly by the theories and methods developed in linguistics, whose task is precisely to show how language works”

M.K Halliday “Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies: Stylistics and Psychology”

Scope Stylistics draws principles of inquiry of text form various sources and disciplines such as

Linguistics, Literary Criticism Structuralism Semiotics Sociolinguistics Discourse analysis & Gender Studies

General Aim Determine which stylistic features, i.e. which grammatical category is predominant or stylistically significant. (description) Decide which function the stylistic features paly in the overall meaning of the text (interpretation)

Formal StylisticsHOW A WRITER WRITES

The devices authors use to express their thoughts and to convey the subject matter of works.◦ Style◦ Form

WHAT A WRITER WRITES

The content which these critics refer to as information or message.◦ Information◦ Content

Formal Stylistics Formal Stylisticians understand style as the way authors can present the content of a work, ways that invariably affect its aesthetic quality and the readers’ emotional reaction.

The quality of writing style How does it influence the reader