Practical stylistics

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Practical stylistics

1. The Nature and Domain of Stylistics

1.1 The meaning of style and stylistics

Stylistics, simply defined, is the (linguistic) study of style. The word style has a fairly uncontroversial meaning. It refers to the way in which language is used in a given context, by a given person, for a given purpose,

w Langue being the code or system of rules common to speakers of a language (such as English).

Parole being the particular uses of this system, that speakers or writers make on this or that occasion

e.g.

1. Husband (H): Honey, I gotta to talk to you. (have got to)

2. Wife (W):Sure. Is something wrong? (anything)

3.H: Well, sort of. Yes.

4.W: Bob, something in your voice scares me. Have I done anything? (frighten)

5.H: No. It» s me. I`ve done it. Sheila, remember when you were pregnant with Paula?

6. W: Yes?

7. H: I had to fly to Europe__ Montpellier__ to give that paper…

8. W: And?

9. H: I had an affair. (love affair)

10.W: No. This is some terrible joke. Isn't it?

11.H: No. It's true. I__ I'm sorry.

12.W: Who?

13.H: Nobody. Nobody special. (somebody)

14.W: Who, Robert?

15.H: Her__ her name was Nicole Guirin. She was a doctor.

16.W: And how long did it last?

17.H: Two, three days. (or)

18.W: Two days or three days? I want to know.

19.H: Three days. Does all this matter?

20.W: Everything matters. I thought our marriage was based on total honesty. Why didn't you ever tell me?

21.H: I was waiting for the right moment.

22.W: And ten years later was the right moment? No doubt you thought it would be easier. On Whom?

23.H: I didn't want to hurt you, Sheila. If it's any consolation, that the only time.

24.W: No, it isn't any consolation. Once is more than never.

25.H: Sheila, that was so long ago. I had to tell you now because___ I mean… She's dead.

26W: For God's sake. Bob, why are you telling me all this?

27.H: Sheila, I am telling you because she had a child. (I'm)

28.W: And we have two__so what?

29.H: He's mine. The boy is mine.

30.W: Oh, no, it can't be true.

31.H: Yet, it's true. I didn't know about him. Sheila. Please believe me. (know of)

32.W: Why? Why should I believe anything you tell me now?

33.H: Sheila, listen__

34.W: No. I've heard enough

35. W: Bob, why'd you have to tell me? Why?

36.H: Because I don't know what to do. And because I somehow thought you'd help.

37.W: You can't know how it hurts. I trusted you. I trust._

38.H: Please, honey. I'll do anything to make it right.

39.W: You can't.

40.H: You don't mean that you want to split…? (divorce)

41.W: Robert, I don't have the strength right now. For anything. You could do me a big favour.

42.H: Anything?

43.W: Sleep in your study, please.

In the broadest sense, style can be applied to both spoken and written, both literary and non-literary varieties of language such as journalese, advertising, officials, legal documents, etc.; but by tradition, it is particularly associated with written literary texts. In this course we use the term in its broad sense. Style or linguistic style, refers to the linguistic variety of the users in a particular language on different occasions.

Style (scope of study)

1). variety-any system of linguistic expression whose use is governed

by situational variables (regional, occupational, social)

2). dialect-a variety, whether regional or social, has its own system of sounds, lexis and grammar

3). idiolect-a variety characteristic of an individual

4). genre-discourse type, traditionally a type of literature, art, music,

sharing the same style or subject: epic, satire, poem, drama, novel, short story

1.2 Schools of stylistic studies

1.2.1 The Geneva School

Stylistics in its modern sense was established by Charles Bally (1865-1947), a French linguist, the student of Saussure and the author of Traite de Stylistique Francaise (published in 1920s), which marks the beginning of modern stylistics.

Bally thinks:

1).A stylistician is concerned with the ways and effect of the linguistic expressions common to the same speech community, not the idiolect of a particular individual.

2).His stylistics focuses on the study of spoken variety, excluding literature. Later his followers Cressot, Marouseau made alterations including literary texts.

3).Bally concentrates on the emotive dimension of language, that is words, phrases and grammatical structures that express emotions

1.2.2 Psychological school

The German stylistician Leo Spitzer, Karl Vossler, Erich Auerbach established Psychological Stylistics.

1). They attempted by stylistic analysis to explain the psychological conditions of a nation.

2).One major concern of stylistics is to check or validate intuitions by detailed analysis. Linguistic analysis can not replace the reader's intuition, what Spitzer calls the `click' in the mind.

3).The understanding and appreciation of a literary work depends on intuition realized by `reading and rereading'.

4). He insisted that the smallest detail of language can unlock the `soul' of a literary work.

Its shortcomings:it is too subjective and lacking in scientific basis.

1.2.3 The Structuralist School

Structuralist theory can be traced back to Immanuel Kant, a transcendentalist who believed that a great part of thinking was generated in the structure of mind, not a reflection of experience.

Structuralist stylistics, represented by Roland Barthes, stylistic aesthetist.

1). He held that the whole of writing is style, writing without style does not exist.

2). A literary work should not be viewed as a dualist structure of form and content. A work is a unity of various forms. There exists only form, no content.

This idea of his met disagreement. It is generally thought that a literary work has a theme and content. Forms alone do not make literature.

1.2.4 London School

Under the influence of Linguist J.R. Firth, the British stylistic analysts took into consideration of social factors-register, which is a variety distinguished according to use.

Holliday, Leech, Crystal, David and Short and so on have all contributed to the field of stylistic studies.

1. They hold that style is related to all the three major components of discourse:

1). field of discourse-the content,

2). mode of discourse-the manner and

3). tenor of discourse-the relations between addresser and addressee.

2. Holliday's analysis of William Golding's novel The Inheritors is generally taken as a masterpiece in stylistic analysis. These new developments mark a modern linguistic approach to stylistic analysis.

1.2.5 Russian Formalist and Prague School

Roman Jacobson founded `Moscow Linguistics Group' in 1915, and in 1916 Viktor Shklovsky set up `Poetic Language Research Society'.

1). Both paid special attention to the form and language of literature

2).They held that usually people use language unconsciously. But literature, poetry in particular, aims to change the process and make what is familiar unfamiliar.

3). Jacobson believed that poetry is `an organized violence committed on ordinary speech' for fabulous effect.

1.2.6 The Five Clocks

The five Clocks (a book of about 140 pages) was published by the American linguist Martin Joos in 1962.

1). Joos takes style for granted and thinks that the stylistician's task is to give a description of it.

2).He held that stylistic study should focus on the internal linguistic features of texts.

3).He divided style into five scales: frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate.

If a pendulum starts to swing from this point in both directions, the further it goes in the left direction the more formal it becomes or vice versa.

frozen-intimate

formal casual

consultative

Please read the following passages and decide their scales:

(A) Madame Chairman, Mrs. Vice-president, Honored Guests, Faculty and Friends:

I feel most deeply honored to have been invited to speak to such an illustrious gathering tonight and to be given the privilege of presenting my distinguished colleagues, especially Dr. Monrovia, who has been engaged in a very demanding research project in the field of sociolinguistics, an area of study which we feel has great potential for your profession also.

(B) Ladies and Gentlemen,

I'm exceedingly grateful to have been asked by our chairman, Dr. Jean Monrovia, to present our recent findings on the topic of «Research and Developments in Sociolinguistics», and hope it will prove useful to those of you engaged in teaching English.

(C) Good evening, Friends,

Our chairman, Jean Monrovia, asked me to share some of my current research in sociolinguistics, and I hope it will be useful to you in your English classes next week

(D) Hi, everyone,

Jean asked me to come on over and rap a bit about the stuff I'into in sociolinguistics. Maybe it'll help in teaching those English classes, and I hope you won't be turn off with some of the technical jargon and stuff.

1.3 Dualism

1. What is dualism?

2. What is its theoretical basis?

3. What are the strong points and weak points?

1.3.1 Style as the `dress of thought' (one kind of dualism)

The distinction between what a writer has to say, and how it is presented to the reader, underlies one of the earliest and most persistent concept of style: that of style as the `dress of thought'.

For example:

The sweetest rose hath his prickle,

the finest velvet his brack,

the fairest flour his bran, so

the sharpest wit hath his wanton will and

the holiest head his wicked way. (Euphues)

(old-fashioned, alliteration, paralleism)

It is obviously the aesthetics of form which tends to attract the reader's attention here, rather than the meaning (Even the best things have their flaws).

The metaphor of `dress of thought' implies that style is something we can do without. It is something additional not an inseparable part of the writing. The question is: Can we write in a way the content is presented in its nakedness?

1.3.2 Style as manner of expression (another kind of dualism)

The dualist holds that there can be different ways of conveying the same content. The separability of form and content of dualism has been justified by transformational grammar which Ohmann appeals. For example:

1. Shaw wrote Pygmalion. stylistic psychological school

2. Pygmalion was written by Shaw.

3. Shaw was the playwright of Pygmalion.

These are variants of the original. But the differences among the three sentences are chiefly grammatical rather than lexical; and the grammatical aspect of style is the one on which Ohmann concentrates.

Dualism assumes that one can paraphrase the sense of a text but not the significance.

The term sense is used to refer to the basic logical, conceptual, paraphrasable meaning and significance to refer to the total of what is communicated to the world by a given sentence or text.

Dualists hold that forms have significance, which we may call stylistic value, in a writer's choice to express his sense in this rather than that way. This view may be formalized in the equation: sense + stylistic value = (total) significance.

1.4 Monism

The dualist's notion of paraphrase rests on the assumption that there is some basic sense that can be preserved in different renderings. The monist holds that this is a mistake, and that any alteration of form leads to a change of content.

For example, figurative language confronts us with a paraphrase problem.

«All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages…» (Shakespeare)

In some cases, the form is the very meaning of the text. For example:

Pease porridge hot БЅЦ»АП»ўЈ¬БЅЦ»АП»ў

Pease porridge cold ЕЬµГїмЈ¬ЕЬµГїм

Pease porridge in the pot Ц»Г»УРОІ°Н

Nine days old. Ц»Г»УРДФґь

ХжЖж№ЦЈ¬ХжЖж№ЦЎЈ

David Lodge, in Language of Fiction, adopts a monist stance, arguing that there is no essential difference between poetry and prose, in so far as the following tenets apply to both:

(1) It is impossible to paraphrase literary writing;

(2) It is impossible to translate a literary work;

(3) It is impossible to divorce the general appreciation of a literary

work from the appreciation of its style.

1.5 Pluralism

1. What is pluralism?

2. What are the similarities and differences between dualism and monism and pluralism?

3. What are the strong points and weak points?

A more enlightening alternative to both monism and dualism is the approach that is called stylistic pluralism. According to the pluralist:

1). language performs a number of different functions, and any piece of language is likely to be the result of choices made on different functional levels.

2). the pluralist is not content with the dualist's division between `expression' and `content': He wants to distinguish various strands of meaning according to various functions.

language can perform varied functions or communicative roles:

referential function

directive or persuasive function

emotive function or social function

the pluralist adds the idea that language is intrinsically multifunctional, so that even the simplest utterance conveys more than one kind of meaning. E.g.….

There are many functional classifications of language that have been proposed, three have had some currency in literary studies. The oldest of the three was given by I.A. Richards in Practical Criticism (1929), in which he distinguishes four types of function, and four kinds of meaning: sense, feeling, tone, and intention.

Jacobson's (1961) is based on a more systematic theory of language, and distinguishes six functions: (referential, emotive, conative (affecting behavior or action), phatic, poetic, metalinguistic).

More recently still, Halliday's functional model of language acknowledges three major functions, which he calls:

Ideational, interpersonal, and textual.

There is an incompatibility between the pluralist and the dualist and monist:

1.6 A Multilevel approach

It is obvious that Halliday's pluralism has advantages over both dualism and monism. But dualism and monism each have its own merit.

What is good in the dualist and monism?

It captures the insight that two pieces of language can be seen as alternative ways of saying the same thing.

Monism is more suited to opaque than transparent styles of writing.

For Halliday, however, even choices which are clearly dictated by subject matter are part of style: it is part of the style of a particular cookery book that it contains words like butter, flour, boil and bake.

It is sensible to take a multilevel view of style, which is a combination of monism, dualism and pluralism, because each has something to contribute to a comprehensive view of style.

1.7 Conclusion: meaning of style

`Style' has suffered from over-definition:

1. Style is a way in which language is used: it belongs to parole rather than to langue.

2. Style consists in choices made from the repertoire of the language.

3. A style is defined in terms of a domain of language use (e.g. what choices are made by a particular author, in a particular genre, or in a particular text).

4. Stylistics (or the study of style) has typically been concerned with literary language.

5. Literary stylistics is typically concerned with explaining the relation between style and literary or aesthetic function

6. Style is relatively transparent or opaque: transparency implies paraphrasability; opacity implies that a text cannot be adequately paraphrased, and that interpretation of the text depends greatly on the creative imagination of the reader.

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