STLTYLISTICS LONG QUESTIONS

STYLE

 INTRODUCTION:

The style in writing can be defined as the way a writer writes. It is the technique that an
individual author uses in his writing. It varies from author to author, and depends upon one’s
syntax, word choice, and tone. It can also be described as a “voice” that readers listen to when
they read the work of a writer.

A Dictionary of Literary Terms defines style as: “The characteristic manner of expression
in prose or verse; how a particular writer says things. The analysis and assessment of style
involves examination of a writer’s choice of words, his figures of speech, the devices (rhetorical
or otherwise), the shape of his sentences, and the shape of his paragraphs—indeed, of every
conceivable aspect of his language and the way in which he uses it. Style defies complete
analysis or definition… it is the tone and voice of the writer himself; as peculiar to him as his
laugh, his walk, his handwriting and the expression on his face.”

 TRADITIONAL CONCEPT OF STYLE:

Style has been an object of study from ancient times. ARISTOTLE, CICERO AND
DEMETRIUS treated style as the proper adornment of thought. In this view, which prevailed
throughout the Renaissance period, devices of style can be classified. The essayist or orator is
expected to frame his ideas with the help of model sentences and prescribed kinds of “figures”
suitable to his mode of discourse.

The traditional idea of style as something properly added to thoughts contrasts with the
ideas that derive from CHARLES BALLY, the Swiss philologist, and LEO SPITZER, the Austrian
literary critic. According to followers of these thinkers, style in language arises from the
possibility of choice among alternative forms of expression, as for example, between “children,”
“kids,” “youngsters,” and “youths,” each of which has a different value.

This theory emphasizes the relation between style and linguistics, as does the theory of
EDWARD SAPIR, who talked about literature that is form-based (Horace, Virgil, and much of Latin
literature) and literature that is content-based (Homer, Plato, Dante, William Shakespeare) and
the near untranslatability of the former.

Style is also seen as a mark of character. The COUNT DE BUFFON’s famous epigram that
means “STYLE IS THE MAN HIMSELF” in his Discourse sur le style suggests that, no matter how
calculatingly choices may be made, a writer’s style will bear the mark of his personality. An

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experienced writer is able to rely on the power of his habitual choices of sounds, words, and
syntactic patterns to convey his personality or fundamental outlook. The traditional, literary
critical attitude towards ‘Style’ is subjective and unscientific, and considers it a writer’s intuitive
insight into aesthetics.

This concept of style is essentially ambiguous because the reader may or may not share
with the writer and critic the level and delicacy of intuitive perception. It is, therefore,
undemocratic and imperialistic in its nature. Style is a writer’s individual mode of expression.

 MODERN CONCEPT OF STYLE:

The twentieth-century work on stylistics, particularly in Britain, by scholars such as
ROGER FOWLER and M. A. K. HALLIDAY, looked at relationships between social, contextual, and
formal linguistic analysis. There were also attempts to interrogate the logical assumptions
underlying stylistics.

Modern stylistics uses the tools of formal linguistic analysis coupled with the methods
of literary criticism; its goal is to try to isolate characteristic uses and functions of language and
rhetoric rather than advance normative or prescriptive rules and patterns.

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. 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:

1. Field (“what the participants… are actually engaged in doing”, for instance, discussing
a specific subject or topic),
2. Tenor (who is taking part in the exchange)
3. Mode (the use to which the language is being put).
FOWLER comments that different fields produce different language, most obviously at
the level of vocabulary. 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.

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Halliday’s third category, MODE, is what he refers to as the symbolic organization of the
situation. WILLIAM DOWNES recognizes two distinct aspects within the category of mode and
suggests that not only does it describe the relation to the medium: written or spoken, but also
describes the genre of the text.

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 DOWNES makes
the point that the principal characteristic of register, no matter how peculiar or diverse, is that
it is obvious and immediately recognizable.

STYLE IN DETAIL

 FOUR SENSES OF STYLE:

Style is a pattern of linguistics features that distinguishes one piece of writing from the
other. It reveals the writer’s thoughts and philosophy shaped in a particular form. And, because,
a style is all about the writers’ linguistic choices that make it a mean of discovery for readers to
decode the significance behind. So, style is the language habits that a reader senses after several
readings to the same author. Mainly, stylisticians distinguish four occurring senses of STYLE:

1) UNIQUENESS i.e., language habit of one writer. e.g., Shakespeare, James Joyce,
Hemingway.
2) The language habits SHARED BY A GROUP at a particular period. e.g., The Augustan
poet, epic poetry, Victorian novelists.
3) Saying the right thing in the most effective way with good manners ‘CLEAR’ OR
‘REFINED’ STYLE.
4) Evaluation and description of literature in LITERARY CRITICISM or APPRECIATION:
‘Good” ‘effective’ ‘beautiful’ writing.

 FIVE ELEMENTS:

When analyzing any given piece of writing, stylisticians consider five elements revealed
by language. Those elements are:

a) The formality of the language

b) Tone
c) Diction
d) Figures of speech

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e) Sentence patterns

1) THE FORMALITY OF LANGUAGE:

Writer’s choice of language can be formal or informal according to their style and nature
of their work. Here are the major differences between formal and informal language;

FORMAL INFORMAL
VOCABULARY High-level Low-level; perhaps slang or
dialogue
ORGANIZATION Highly structured; with More so narrative.
subtopics
POINT OF VIEW Usually 3rd person omniscient Usually First person or third
person limited
SENTENCE STRUCTURE Variation in sentences Do not very as much in
(simple, compound, complex structure; mostly simple or
compound) compound sentences are
used.

John Updike’s A&P supplies literature with the best example of the use of informal
language in a literary work, in a way to show the charm and magic of our daily language. Here is
an example from the John Updike’s story;

“You never know for sure how girls’ minds work (do you really think it’s a mind in there
or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?).”

In contrast, Jane Austen’s Emma regarded as the best example of using formal, elegant
and powerful language to show the competencies and kills of the characters, also their social
status. Here is an example from Jane Austen’s masterpiece;

“There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.”

2) TONE:

It is simply the writers’ attitude toward the subject. Readers easily detect the authors’
tone from his use of language.

For example, Holden Caulfield in J.D Salinger’s “Catching the Rye” unfolds his personality
through the tone he adopts throughout the novel. Let us have a look at some of his remarks:

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 “All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

 “If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.”
 “Goddamn money. It always ends up making you blue as hell”
 “Catholics are always trying to find out if you’re Catholic.”

Holden’s tone is bitterly sarcastic as he criticizes the nature of things in real life. His
character may reveal the attitude of the writer towards life as it is common for writers to use
their characters as their mouthpieces.

3) DICTION:

Diction or the word choice of a writer is one of the main elements that shows the author’s
style and reveal the mood and tone; because it demonstrates the words used class, type, level of
formality and use.

Writers skillfully choose words to develop a certain tone and atmosphere in their works.
Read the following excerpt from a short story “The School’ by Donald Barthelme:

“And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don’t know why they died, they just
died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn’t
the best. We complained about it. So, we’ve got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own
little tree to plant and we’ve got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little
brown sticks, it was depressing”

The use of the words “died”, “dead”, “brown sticks” and “depressing” gives a gloomy
tone to the passage.

4) FIGURES OF SPEECH:

Figurative language is being used as a mean to represent or give a vivid and colorful shape
to the intended meaning, or simply to add suspense instead of the accessible literal meaning.
Poetry rather is known for the use of figurative language more than prose.

Here is an example of use hyperbole from W.H Auden’s poem “As I Walked One
Evening”,

“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you

Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

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I’ll love you till the ocean

Is folded and hung up to dry”

The use of hyperbole can be noticed in the above lines. The meeting of China and Africa,
the jumping of the river over the mountain, singing of salmon in the street, and the ocean being
folded and hung up to be dried are exaggerations not possible in real life.

5) SENTENCE PATTERN:

The way writers construct sentences is regarded as the best mean to show the characters’
psychological state, social class, and background (age, sex, education, etc). Whereas, some
authors tend to violate and deviate from the ordinary use and the grammatical structure of the
sentences to show these features properly, especially the psychological states; confusion,
hesitating, doubt, etc.

James Joyce, for example, successfully employs the narrative mode in his novel “Ulysses”
which describes the day in life of a middle-aged Jew, Mr. Leopold Broom, living in Dublin, Ireland.
Read the following excerpt:

“He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey,

presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precious manly, walking on a
nipping morning from the old house in Clambrassil to the high school, his book satchel on him
bandolier wise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten boaf, a mother’s thought.”

These lines reveal the thoughts of Bloom as he thinks of the younger Bloom. The self-
reflection is achieved by the flow of thoughts that takes him back to his past.

 TYPES OF STYLE:

There are FOUR BASIC LITERARY STYLES used in writing. These styles distinguish the
works of different authors, one from another. Here are four styles of writing:

1) Expository or Argumentative Style

2) Descriptive Style
3) Persuasive Style
4) Narrative Style

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1. EXPOSITORY OR ARGUMENTATIVE STYLE

Expository writing style is a subject-oriented style. The focus of the writer in this type of
writing style is to tell the readers about a specific subject or topic, and in the end the author
leaves out his own opinion about that topic. This document that you are reading right now is an
example of expository style as it tells you about “Style and Stylistics”. Here is another example;

 The most common relative adverbs are where, when and why. To choose the
correct one, decide if you need to provide information on location (where), time
(when) or reason (why).

2. DESCRIPTIVE STYLE:

In descriptive writing style, the author focuses on describing an event, a character or a

place in detail. Sometimes, descriptive writing style is poetic in nature in, where the author
specifies an event, an object, or a thing rather than merely giving information about an event
that has happened. Usually the description incorporates sensory details. Here are few examples;

 The sunset fills the entire sky with the lovely deep color of rubies, setting the
clouds ablaze.
 The soft hair of my cat feels silky, and her black color sparkles as it reflects sunlight.
 This painting has blooming flowers, rich and deep blues on vibrant green
stems, begging me to pick them.

3. PERSUASIVE STYLE:

Persuasive style of writing is a category of writing in which the writer tries to give reasons
and justification to make the readers believe his point of view. The persuasive style aims to
persuade and convince the readers. Look at these examples;

 A trip to Switzerland is an excellent experience that you will never forget, offering
beautiful nature, fun, and sun. Book your vacation trip today.
 What if you vote for me? I ensure you that your taxes will be very low, the
government will provide free education, and there will be equality and justice for
all citizens. Cast your vote for me today.
 Our criminal investigators are famous for recovering clients’ assets, as we not only
take your cases but represent truly your interests.

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4. NARRATIVE STYLE:

Narrative writing style is a type of writing wherein the writer narrates a story. It includes
short stories, novels, novellas, biographies, and poetry. Here are few examples;

 “I think it’s a good idea.” Said Jenny. “You can imagine the outcomes!” retorted
Emma, pushing the door open. Reluctantly, Jenny followed.
 She hears a hoarse voice, and sees a shadow moving around the balcony. As it
moves closer to her, she screams to see a gigantic wolf standing before her.

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