34 Stylistics

Ms. Safia Begum

Introduction:

This module introduces you to the branch of applied linguistics called ‘Stylistics’. In this module you will learn about the meaning of stylistics, what style means and varied definitions of it. Further, you will learn about the background/emergence of stylistics as an independent discipline. In this you will come to know about the various theories that paved the way for its emergence. Later you will be introduced to some of the major concept of stylistics like foregrounding and deviation along with some examples.

Learning Outcome:

Objective of this module is to introduce you to some basic concepts of stylistics.

Stylistics:

To understand the meaning of stylistics it is pertinent to know the meaning of style. Merriam Webster Dictionary defines style as “a distinctive manner of expression (as in writing or speech)” or “a distinctive manner or custom of behaving or conducting oneself” or “ a particular mode of living” or “a particular manner or technique by which something is done, created, or performed”1. Hence, style means a way in which a thing is done or fashioned. Similarly in literature too writers consider style important. The following are some of the noted definitions of style by various writers

Definitions of Style:

1. According to Goethe, “Generally speaking, an author’s style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character”
2. For Buffon “Style  is a man’s own; it is a part of his nature….The style is the man himself”
3. Jonathan Swift opines that “Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style”
4. Gustave Flaubert says, “One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.”
5. Edward Gibbon holds that “The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise”
6. “Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the caliber of a bullet, teething beads” says Alexander Theroux

For all these writers style is an image of writer’s minds or the writer himself or the organisation and arrangements of words in a particular order is considered significant for style. For some it takes an effort to arrive at style. If there is no style then there is nothing. Hence, style is a  significant feature of writing that helps in presenting one’s own feelings, thoughts, emotions and so on. There are various styles of writings and different authors have varied styles of writing. How do we arrive at meaning based on style? In this situation it is stylistics that helps one to analyse a literary piece and derive meaning.

Definition and Meaning of Stylistics:

According to David Crystal, “Stylistics is a branch of Linguistics which studies the feature of situationally distinctive uses of language and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language”.

Peter Barry says “Stylistics is a critical approach which uses the methods and findings of the science of linguistics in the analysis of literary texts. By ‘linguistics’ here is meant the scientific study of language and structures, rather than the learning of individual languages”

In specific terms stylistics means a scientific way of examining/interpreting the language of a literary text. It is one of the branches of applied linguistics like psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, etc. It does this by applying the insights of linguistics to arrive at an interpretation of a literary text. Unlike literary criticism where focus remains not only on the language but on various aspects like history and culture of a literary text, biography of an author, so on and so forth to arrive at the interpretation of a literary text. However, stylistics does this by the simple means of linguistic techniques.

Stylistics traces its origin in the subject of antiquity, that is, rhetoric. According to Barry “Stylistics is, in a sense, the modern version of the ancient discipline known as ‘rhetoric’, which taught its students how to structure an argument, how to make effective use of figures of speech, and generally how to pattern and vary speech or piece of writing so as to produce the maximum impact” (Barry, 205). Rhetoric was one of the three subjects of ancient Greeks. The other two subjects were logic and grammar (Stylistics, Block-I, 05). Aristotle in his book Rhetoric says the ways to achieve the effective means of communication lies in the usage of vocabulary, syntax and figures of speech. These things help in creating an effect on the listeners/audiences. Hence, rhetoric becomes an art of persuasion. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Aristotle’s Rhetoric”) Initially rhetoric was an art of persuasion through speech but later on it also came to mean all forms of eloquence along with writing. (Stylistics: Block-I, 05) Hence, there is a close connection between rhetoric and stylistics.

Background:

Stylistics as a proper discipline as we know it today emerged in 20th century. It is the linguistic theories that majorly developed in twentieth century, laid the foundation of stylistics. The following are some of the theories that helped stylistics emerge as an independent discipline.

Ferdinand de Saussure:

He was a Swiss linguistic scholar and semiotician. He studied and taught at the University of Geneva. He studied historical linguistics and interrelationship among the three classical languages, that is, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. He propounded various concepts very late in his life. He presented them in a series of lectures that he delivered in French at the University of Geneva from 1906 – 1911. Two of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, developed the notes they had taken during his lectures. They published it three years after Saussure’s death as Cour de Linguistique Generale (1916).

Saussure’s major concepts are

1.  Diachronic and Synchronic 2. Langage, langue and parole 3. Signifier and signified 4. Meanings are relational 5. Relationship between syntagmatic and paradigmatic

 Russian Formalism:

Russian Formalism as we know it today had its origin in Moscow. It was initially known as the Moscow Linguistic Circle formed in 1915. The prominent figures of this circle were Boris Eichenbaum, Victor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson. However, they could not continue their work in Russia due to political reasons. Thus, they migrated to Prague and founded Prague linguistic Circle in 1926. During this time a few Czech linguists also joined them like Jan Mukarovsky. Later, Roman Jakobson migrated to America. However, today the work of all these linguists is known as Russian Formalism though most of .their work was done outside of Russia.

Further, to make a distinction from other literary schools like Anglo-American New Critics they were identified as Russian Formalists.

Russian Formalists always maintained a distinction between standard and poetic language. In the essay “Standard Language and Poetic language” Jan Mukarovsky discussed the function of poetic language. According to him the function of poetic language is to foreground. Foregrounding gives prominence or importance to something. Opposite of foregrounding is automatization. According to Victor Shklovsky the aim of foregrounding is to defamiliarize. It estranges the language, disrupts the ordinary discourse.

On the same lines Boris Tomashevsky makes a distinction between story and plot. He says ‘story’ is the actual sequence of real or imagined situations. Plot is the artistic representation of events.

Roman Jakobson talks about the intrinsic factors involved in any communication like addresser and addressee.

Whenever a message has an emphasis on any specific aspect of communication like if the focus is on the addressee (the listener) then the conative function predominates. Similarly, in a literary text if the focus is on the poetic then text becomes the centre of discussion. When we talk about the language using language then language is performing a metalingual function. If we use language to confirm, renew our contacts then phatic function dominates in our communication. Thus, structure of our sentence depends upon the focus and function. However, a single sentence can perform different function at a time.

Structuralism:

Structuralism, an intellectual movement, began in France in 1950s. It was influenced by the works of various eminent scholars and movements like Saussurean concepts, American structural linguistics, Russian Formalism, British Functional Linguistics. Further, the various literary theorists like Roland Barthes, Jonathan Culler, Claude Levi-Strauss apart from Roman Jakobson contributed for the establishment of structuralism as a literary theory (Stylistics: Block- I, 29-30). You may learn about them and their concepts in detail in other modules.

Emergence of Stylistics:

All these eminent scholars’ works and movement paved the way for the emergence of stylistics. It was in late 1950s a number of scholarly works began to apply linguistics for the interpretation of literary works, in other words, stylistics. It began with “a famous ‘Conference on Style’ held at Indiana University in 1958” (206). The proceedings of it published as Style in Language (1960) edited by Thomas A. Sebeok and Linguistics and Literary Style (1970) edited by Donald C. Freeman. Essays on Style and Language (1966) and The Language of Literature (1971) by Roger Fowler.

(1) What Does Stylistics Do?

The following are some of the points as noted by Peter Barry

• Stylistic analysis is an objective and scientific commentary upon a literary text which is based on concrete quantifiable data and applied in a systematic way. Further, it emphasises on the connections between literary and everyday language.
• It uses concepts of linguistics such as ‘transitivity’, ‘under-lexicalisation’, ‘collocation’ and ‘cohesion’ so on and so forth.

All these are the foregrounding devices.

What is Foregrounding?

Oxford online dictionary defines foreground as “The part of a view that is nearest to the observer, especially in a picture or photograph.” and as a verb it means to “Make (something) the most prominent or important feature.” Hence, foreground means to bring something into one’s attention by placing it in front and make it more prominent. It is generally used as a technique to highlight or underline the meaning of something in an artistic work as in photography, paintings, literature, stylistics and so on. It is done to attract the attention of the readers. Moreover, foregrounding is used to shift the attention of the reader from “what is said to how it is said”. “In systemic functional linguistics, foregrounding refers to a prominent portion of a text that contributes to the total meaning. (The background provides the relevant context for the foreground.)”

Jan Mukarovsky pioneered the concept of foregrounding in Russian as ‘aktualisace’ and it is rendered into English as foregrounding. Foregrounding as mentioned above refers to various effects of style that a writer uses to highlight or shock or to drag the attention of readers towards it. It could be at phonetic level like through alliteration, rhyme etc. or at the grammatical level by using inversion, ellipsis etc., or at the semantic level by employing metaphor, irony etc. Further, Mukarovsky notes that foregrounding exist everywhere like in oral discourse or journalistic writings etc. However, he says in literature it is more organised and structured and in a hierarchical manner. As in one aspects of writing or device dominates the other.

There are different types of foregrounding techniques used in literature. The following are some of the foregrounding devices

Deviation:

In linguistic terms deviation means to move away from the language rules. Another name of deviation in the traditional sense of meaning is the poetic license. Poetic license means “The liberty taken by an artist or writer in deviating from conventional form or fact to achieve a desired effect”4 or “license or liberty taken by a poet, prose writer, other artist in deviating from rule, conventional form, logic, or fact, in order to produce a desired effect”5 . Poets and writers seem to have this license to deviate from normal usage of language. On the other hand a common native language user adheres to/obeys the conventional language rules. However, deviation is an important device through which writers create or have a desired effect on their readers. The following are some of the language deviation techniques widely employed by the writers.

Graphological Deviation:

It means the moving away from the conventional form of arranging letters into words and words into lines (in verse) and into sentences (in prose or verse) For example see the E.E. Cummings poem “l(a” l(a le af fa ll s) one l Iness.

The moment we look at it the first question would be, is this a poem or what kind of poem is it? If we look at it carefully for one or two minutes we will be able to see the only one complete word that is ‘one’. If we look at is once again then appears the word ‘leaf’ in it. Then we will see the ‘leaf’ now ‘falls’. Further we will see there is a bracket. If we remove that  bracket and the words written in it then we will see the word ‘loneliness’. The poem through the symbol of falling leaf presents the idea of loneliness.

Orthographic Deviation:

There is another interesting deviation device called ‘Orthographic deviation’. Orthographic deviation means departure from the conventional form of spelling. For example: ‘kar’ instead of ‘car’ or ‘foto’ instead of ‘photo’ as we sometimes find it in shops signing boards especially in remote areas. These are though not consciously written in order to attract the people. However, they do attract our attention and make us laugh. Similarly we find such deviation in creative writings as well. Of course a writer deviates not just to attract the attention of her/his readers but her/his linguistic deviation is a conscious effort that points at something meaningful. It also helps in comprehending overall meaning of literary piece. For example: William Blake’s poem “The Tyger’. In it Blake uses the spelling of ‘tiger’ as ‘tyger’. ““Tyger” was indeed an older spelling but even by Blake’s time the modern spelling (“tiger”) had been standardized and so the poet was making a deliberate departure. The older spelling suggests an animal that is different more mysterious. The letter “y” in the middle also may represent a longer vowel or diphthong. (In one of the stories of A.A Milne, the boy calls his pet tiger “Tigger” (pronounced to rhyme with “snigger”), which takes away all terror from the animal!). Blake’s deviant spelling acquires significance in the context of the entire poem where the animal is represented as an object of awe, terror, wonder and mystery.” (Stylistics Block-I, 65) Thus, in artistic works every linguistic deviation that is made holds significance.

 Under-lexicalisation:

“It is a terms invented by Fowler: it refers to cases where there is a ‘lack of an adequate set of words to express specific concepts’” (Barry, 215) For example: for a particular words like handle we do not say ‘handle’ rather use the word ‘the holding thing’ (Barry, 216)

Collocation:

Collocation is the habitual juxtaposition of two or more words together. It is the common feature of poetry. Poets generally “break the habitual collocation patterns, so that words not usually seen together suddenly occur” (Barry, 217). They provide us unusual patterns of words that we have never seen or imagined before. Ronald Carter, a stylistician, analysed the W.H Auden’s “Capital” in Literary Text and Language Study ed. Carter, Ronald and Burton Deirdre.

In the poem Carter shows how Auden avoids saying “‘waiting patiently’ and instead says of the idle rich in big cities that they are ‘waiting expensively for miracles to happen’” (Barry, 218).

Cohesion:

Cohesion means sticking together. Here sentences that are joined into a single continuous utterance are known as cohesion. Syntactically or grammatically they are individual sentences. However, if they are put together side by side they make sense. In the absence of cohesion they read awkward. For example: This is Anita. Anita is my friend. Anita and I go to school together. The awkward sentences or repetition of proper noun is eliminated by using pronoun. In linguistic terminology it is called “Pronominalisation”. (Barry, 218) If the proper noun is removed from the sentences then they will be like this “This is Anita. She is my friend. We go to school together.” We can see that now these sentences are in cohesion. They make more sense and have flow.

Conclusions:

Thus, stylistics is a literary theory that uses linguistics devices in order to analyse a literary writing either prose or poetry. Apart from this there are various other devices that stylistics uses like deviation in punctuation, morphological deviation, syntactic deviation, metaphor as deviant collocation, semantic deviation, repetition, phonological repetition, lexical repetition, syntactic repetition, and parallelism.

Summary of the Module:

In this module you are introduced to the subject of stylistics. In this we have discussed about the definitions of style, what is stylistics its meaning and definitions, background of the discipline stylistics, some of the major theoretical concepts of different linguistic or literary schools and movement that helped in developing stylistics as an independent discipline. Later on you have seen how stylistics arrived as a theory or discipline. Further, you have seen what stylistics does or how to analyze a text using stylistic devices. We have also discussed some of the major stylistic devices like foregrounding, deviation etc. For more on this module, please find the e-text, learn more and self-assessment tabs.

References

• Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Viva Books Private Limited: New Delhi, 20008.
• Crystal, David. What is Linguistics? Edward Arnold: London, 1983.
• Dictionary.com “Poetic license” http://www.dictionary.com/browse/poetic-license
• Merriam Webster Dictionary. “Style”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/style
• Simon, Shibu. “Analysis of selected stylistic concepts and the method of their application in teaching literature in under-graduate classes in India”. Unpublished thesis. Submitted to Mahatma Gandhi University, 1998. http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/319
• Nordquist, Richard . “Foregrounding” http://grammar.about.com/od/fh/g/Foregrounding.htm
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Aristotle’s Rhetoric” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/
• “Stylistics Foregrounding” http://staff.uny.ac.id/sites/default/files/STYLISTICS%20FOREGROUNDING.pdf
• The School of Distance Education, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. PGDTE Study Material, Stylistics, Block-I: History, Theories and Definitions. EFLU: Hyderabad, 2012.
• The Free Dictionary. “Poetic license”. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poetic+license