Introduction

to
Stylistics
Stylistics
Stylistics, a yoking of style and linguistics, is a discipline which has
been approached from many perspectives. Its meaning varies, based on
the theory that is adopted. When we carry out the different activities
that are connected to our area of business, either in spoken or written
forms, we often use devices of thought and the rules of language, but
there are variations so as to change meanings or say the same thing in
different ways.

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 Stylistics as a conceptual discipline may attempt to establish principles
capable of explaining particular choices made by individuals and social
groups in their use of language, such as in the literary production and
reception of genre, the study of folk art, in the study of
spoken dialects and registers, and can be applied to areas such
as discourse analysis as well as literary criticism.

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This is what the concept of style is based upon: the use
of language in different ways, all for the purpose of
achieving a common goal - to negotiate meanings.

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❑ Stylistics is a broad term that has assumed different meanings from different
linguistic scholars. But it can simply be said to be the study of style. Style on its own as
defined by Lucas (1955:9) is: the effective use of language, especially in prose, whether to
make statements or to rouse emotions. It involves first of all the power to put fact with clarity
and brevity.
❏ The term is applied to the realm of linguistics and literary science which studies
peculiarities of a writer individual manner of using language means to achieve
his goals of influencing the reader.
❏ The term “STYLE” originated from the Latin “stilus” which means
a pen used by the Romans for writing on wax, tablets. In the
course of time it developed several meanings, each one applied
to a specific study of language elements and their use in speech.
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❑ Prof. Galperin defines INDIVIDUAL STYLE
as a unique combination of language units,expressive means
and stylistic peculiar to a given writer, which makes that writer’s works
or even utterances easily recognizable.
❏ Saussure’s disciple Charles Bally modeled his ideas of style on a
structural conception of language and started that branch of general linguistics which is
sometimes called linguostylistics.

❏ Style has also been defined as the description and analysis of the variability forms of
linguistic items in actual language use. Leech (1969: 14) quotes Aristotle as saying that
“the most effective means of achieving both clarity and diction and a certain dignity is
the use of altered form of words.”

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❑ Stylistics is also defined as a study of the different
styles that are present in either a given utterance or a written text or document. The consistent
appearance of certain structures, items and elements in a speech, an utterance or in a given text is
one of the major concerns of Stylistics. Stylistics requires the use of traditional levels of linguistic
description such as sounds, form, structure and meaning. It then follows that the consistent
appearance of certain structures, items and elements in speech utterances or in a given text is one
of the major concerns of stylistics. Linguistic

❏ Stylistic studies is concerned with the varieties of language and the

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❑ The concepts of style and stylistic variation in language are based on the general notion that
within the language system, the content can be encoded in more than one linguistic form.
Thus, it is possible for it to operate at all linguistic levels such as phonological, lexical and
syntactic. Therefore, style may be regarded as a choice of linguistic means, as deviation from
the norms of language use, as recurrent features of linguistic forms and as comparisons.
Stylistics deals with a wide range of language varieties and styles that that are possible in
creating different texts, whether spoken or written, monologue or dialogue, formal or
informal, scientific or religious etc.

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❑ Again, stylistics is concerned with the study
of the language of literature or the study of
the language habits of particular authors and their writing patterns.
From the foregoing, stylistics can be said to be the techniques of explication which allows us to
define objectively what an author has done, (linguistic or non-linguistic), in his use of language.
❑ The main aim of stylistics is to enable us understand the intent of the author in the manner
the information has been passed across by the author or writer. Therefore, stylistics is
concerned with the examination of grammar, lexis, semantics as well as phonological
properties and discursive devices. Stylistics is more interested in the significance of function
that the chosen style fulfils.
❏ The analysis of literary style goes back to the study of classical rhetoric,
though modern stylistics has its roots in Russian Formalism[ and the
related Prague School of the early twentieth century.

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❑ In 1909, Charles Bally's Traité de stylistique française had proposed stylistics as a distinct academic
discipline to complement Saussurean linguistics. For Bally, Saussure's linguistics by itself couldn't
fully describe the language of personal expression. Bally's program fitted well with the aims of the
Prague School.

❑ Taking forward the ideas of the Russian Formalists, the Prague School built on the concept
of foregrounding, where it is assumed that poetic language is considered to stand apart from non-
literary background language, by means of deviation (from the norms of everyday language)
or parallelism. According to the Prague School, however, this background language isn't constant,
and the relationship between poetic and everyday language is therefore always shifting.

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❑ Roman Jakobson had been an active member of the Russian Formalists and the Prague School,
before emigrating to America in the 1940s. He brought together Russian Formalism and
American New Criticism in his Closing Statement at a conference on stylistics at Indiana
University in 1958. Published as Linguistics and Poetics in 1960, Jakobson's lecture is often credited
with being the first coherent formulation of stylistics, and his argument was that the study of poetic
language should be a sub-branch of linguistics. The poetic function was one of six general functions
of language he described in the lecture.

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❑ Michael Halliday is an important figure in the development of British stylistics. His 1971
study Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William
Golding's The Inheritors is a key essay. One of Halliday's contributions has been the use of the
term register to explain the connections between language and its context. For Halliday register is
distinct from dialect. Dialect refers to the habitual language of a particular user in a specific
geographical or social context. Register describes the choices made by the user, choices which
depend on three variables: field ("what the participants... are actually engaged in doing", for
instance, discussing a specific subject or topic), tenor (who is taking part in the exchange)
and mode (the use to which the language is being put).

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❑ Fowler comments that different fields produce
different language, most obviously at the level of vocabulary
 (Fowler. 1996, 192) The linguist David Crystal points out that Halliday's 'tenor’
stands as a roughly equivalent term for ‘style’, which is a more specific alternative used by linguists to
avoid ambiguity. (Crystal. 1985, 292) Halliday’s third category, mode, is what he refers to as the symbolic
organization of the situation. Downes recognizes two distinct aspects within the category of mode and
suggests that not only does it describe the relation to the medium: written, spoken, and so on, but also
describes the genre of the text. (Downes. 1998, 316) Halliday refers to genre as pre-coded language,
language that has not simply been used before, but that predetermines the selection of textual meanings.
The linguist William Downes makes the point that the principal characteristic of register, no matter how
peculiar or diverse, is that it is obvious and immediately recognizable. (Downes. 1998, 309)

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