Literary Stylistics: An

Overview of its
Evolution
 What is Stylistics?

⚫ Stylistics has been derived from a French word

Stylistique – an instrument for Writing.
⚫ A comprehensive definition of stylistics is quite
challenging, however Thornborrow & Wareing
(1998, p. 4) identify following three key
aspects of stylistics.
⚫ 1 the use of linguistics (the study of
language) to approach literary texts;
⚫ 2 the discussion of texts according to objective
criteria rather than according to purely
subjective and impressionistic values;
⚫ 3 an emphasis on the aesthetic
properties of language.
 Stylistics before 20th Century

⚫ Before 20th century, three major movements

can be identified in the evolution
stylistics as a discipline.

⚫ Rhetorical Stylistics
⚫ Aesthetic Stylistics
⚫ Individualistic Stylistics
 Rhetorical Stylistics

⚫ The origin of the concept of style or the early

attempt to study style can be traced
back to the classical school of rhetoric,
which regards style as a part of the
technique of persuasion and discusses it
under oratory.
⚫ This discipline was a set of rules and
strategies which enable orators ‘to speak
well’; in other words to use language that
is fully decorated with all the figures and
tropes to bring about changes in the feelings
and opinions of the audience.
⚫ Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Poetics
 Aesthetic Stylistics

⚫ Renaissan scholars, compare style to

ce flowers,For Samuel Wesley, it is a
jewels, embroidery.
‘dress of thought’. Pope describes
stylistics as the equivalent of ‘true wit’,
which consists in ‘what oft was thought, but
never so well expressed’ and other definition
as well. All these definitions or
descriptions reflect an artificial and
ornamental view of style.
⚫ Gradually, such a discipline expanded from
rhetoric to incorporate other linguistic
discourses (genres).
 Aesthetic Stylistics

⚫ They concentrated their literary

efforts on elements such as diction,
metaphors, images and symbols,
utilized for embellishing the subject
matter of a given piece of literary
work.
⚫ That is, great importance was given to
the choice and artistic arrangement of
words. In this sense, such a practice is
seen as aesthetic stylistics as it is
ornamental in its approach. It is an
extension, which asserts the dogma that
sees the special use of language as ‘the
dress of thought.’
 Individualistic Stylistics

⚫ There is a revival of Cicero’s conception of

style as “an expression of personality.”
(Atkins 1952: 31). This way of entertaining
the language of literature is known as
individual stylistics.
⚫ In turn, this tendency stimulated
linguists to entertain the different,
individual uses in literary discourse - the
way in which a writer expresses himself.
The study of language variations was then
accentuated by the emergence of modern
linguistics in the late 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th century
 Stylistics after 20th Century

⚫ Under the impetus of certain

theoretical developments in Russia and
Europe, Stylistics has seen the following
trends in 20th Century.

⚫ Expressive Stylistics
⚫ Psychological Stylistics
⚫ Formalist Stylistics
⚫ New & Practical Criticism informed Stylistics
⚫ Reader-response Stylistics
 Expressive Stylistics

⚫ At the turn of 20th century, language

studies triggered the birth of a new
discipline, which stands in direct
opposition to the approaches that sees
literature as the outcome of the extrinsic
properties of historical, cultural and
biographical factors to the exclusion of
the linguistic form. It is Charles Bally, a
Geneva linguist whose work in stylistics
developed out of a Saussurian thought,
who gave the impetus to such systematic
studies with the publication of his Traité de
Stylistique.
 Expressive Stylistics

⚫ Bally stresses on the role of

expressiveness in language and the
function of language in interaction as
they have the task of communicating
thought.
⚫ In Bally, emphasis is placed primarily on the
choices of ‘emotive and expressive’ elements of
language
⚫ The affective and expressive qualities are
achieved by “a judicious choice in the
lexicon and, to a lesser degree, in the
syntax; the two types of effects possess forms
that are identical with respect to the expression
of thought but have different affective
expressivity.” (Ducrot & Todorov 1979: 76).
 Psychological Stylistics

⚫ Inspired by the works of Charles Bally, Leo

Spitzer, a practitioner of modern
stylistics, initiated a new line of stylistic
enquiry. He developed a new stylistic
approach, which accounts for the habitual
uses and choices made by the author. It is
an approach which establishes
correlation between the style of a
literary work and the psyche of the
author.
 Psychological Stylistics

⚫ Accordin t Spitzer, studying the

g oonebycan grasp stylistic
the worldviewof
propertie
author. He the postulates that: ‘The only
s,
way,’ to discover the inner traits ‘is to
read and reread, patiently and confidently,
in an endeavor to become, as it were,
soaked through and through with the
atmosphere of the work.’ Then, ‘suddenly,
one word, one line stands out,’ making ‘the
characteristic click
... which is the indication that detail and
whole have found a common denominator.’
(Spitzer 1967: 27).
 Formalist Stylistics

⚫ In the second decade of the 20th century,

another alternative to the study of
literary language which emerged as a
reaction to the more prescriptive or
mechanistic exercises is known as the
Russian Formalism.
⚫ This movement revolutionised against
the traditional, romantic trends in the
study of literature. Distrustful of all the
previous theories of language, the
formalist method emphasised that the study
of language should confine itself to the
explication of the formal linguistic features
of a literary text.
 Formalistic Stylistics: A
Linguistic Approach
⚫ In other words, the proponents of this
movement take the poetic language
as the object of their inquiry; the text
and only the text should be
considered, and no other considerations of
social, historical, ideological or
biographical approaches are entertained.
⚫ ‘The locus of the peculiarly literary,’
Erlich 1981 states, ‘was to be sought
not in the author’s or reader’s psyche but
in the work itself.’
 Formalistic Stylistics: A
Linguistic Approach

⚫ The Formalist movement, Harkins (1951: 178)

asserts, was: dissatisfied with the
hegemony of the neogrammarian
approach in linguistics and with prevailing
eclecticism in literary theory.

⚫ Such eclecticism had led to the study of

literature by a number of different disciplines,
philosophy, psychology, sociology, philology,
cultural history, etc., each of which imposing
its methods on literary scholarships, had
found that literature was only a reflection of
its own content.
 Formalist Stylistics: Concepts

Defamiliarization

⚫ Shklovsky, views literature as the totality of the

formal devices employed in a work of art. He
also expressed the independence of the literary
language in his article ‘Art as Technique’
where he announced the term of
‘defamiliarization’ or ‘making strange’ as a key
concept and a manifesto in literary theory as
the principle in the function of art ‘is to
make people aware of the world in a fresh
way.’ (Peer 1986: 1).
 Formalist Stylistics: Concepts

Automatisation &
Foregrounding

Havránek also believes that the standard

language has different functions to
perform: intellectualisation, automatisation
and foregrounding, each of which is
contrastive use of language
determined by linguistic devices which are
qualities in the in this are:
generated by the purpose or function of the
functional
foregroundin automatisation and
utterance. The two worthy
differentiation
g.
 Formalist Stylistics: Concepts

⚫ Automatisation refers to the use of

linguistic devices for a communicative,
informative purpose without any
attempt to attract the attention as the
social greetings, for example.
⚫ Foregrounding, on the other hand, means
the use of foregrounded, linguistic
devices that make the expression stand
out as uncommon such as the poetic
expression, as can be found in e.e.
cumming’s ‘he danced his did.’
⚫ Functional Style (Parole) and Functional
Language (Langue)
 Formalist Stylistics: Concepts

Standard Language and

Poetic Language

Mukarovsky (1964) asserts, in his influential

work ‘Standard Language and Poetic Language,’
that the poetic use of language, unlike the
standard language, manifested by the
foregrounding devices has to deautomatise
perception and hence achieve surprise:
Foregrounding is the opposite of automatization,
that is, the deautomatization of an act; the
more an act is automatized, the less it is
consciously executed; the more it is
foregrounded, the more completely conscious
does it become.
 Formalist Stylistics: Concepts

⚫ Functions of Language
Jakobson, the major representative of the
Prague circle, argues in his most
influential paper, ‘Linguistics and Poetics’
that: Poetics deals primarily with the
question, What makes a verbal message a
work of art? Because the main subject of
poetics is the differentia specifica of verbal
art in relation to other arts and in relation
to other kinds of verbal behavior, poetics is
entitled to the leading place in literary
studies (1960: 350) (Poetics, in this context,
refers to stylistics).
 Formalist Stylistics: Concepts

Functions of
⚫ According to Jakobson (1960), there are
Language
numerous factors involved in any linguistic
act and which are central to the successful
achievement of a message and without which a
message is incomplete. These numerous factors
are set towards: the addresser, the
addressee, message, context, code, and contact.
⚫ That is, these factors correspond to the six
functions which language performs in
any successful communicative act. Each of
which stands dominant if the emphasis is placed
upon one of the linguistic functions and
similarly determines ‘the verbal structure of
a message.’
Jakobson’s Functions of
Language
 Jakobson’s Principle of
Equivalence
Principle of Equivalence
⚫ The ‘literariness’, which Jakobson stresses in
the poetic use of language, involves two modes
of ordering:
‘selection’ and ‘combination’ and these are
considered to be fundamentally of stylistic
significance.
⚫ This set toward the linguistic features is
achieved through the unique way poetic
language is constructed:
⚫ “The poetic function projects the
principle of equivalence from the axis of
selection into the axis of combination.’
 New & Practical Criticism
informed Stylistics

⚫ These method is concerned exclusively

with the description of the literary texts
particularly poetry. It is a kind of close
reading, similar to the French
Explication De Texte, where the critic makes
a claim about the theme or effect of the
text and then quotes a word, a line
or a passage to strengthen his
argument.
⚫ The names most associated with the
movement are Cleanth Brooks, John
Crowe Ransom, and I.A Richards.
 New & Practical Criticism
informed Stylistics
⚫ Admittedly, New critical school derives its
theoretical background from the textbased
approach known as Practical Criticism,
advocated by I. A. Richards (1924, 1929),
whose doctrine accentuating the significance of
the language of the text over its author in the
study of literary works. These two
movements, though almost identical in theory,
are different in approach whereas New
Criticism is of a descriptive nature as it
concerns itself with describing texts, Practical
Criticism is of a psychological background
for its search of the psychological effects
drawn from the readers interacting with the text.
 Reader-Response Stylistics

⚫ Riffaterre argues that the poetic message

resides in the impression created by the reader
whose role is neglected in such studies.
⚫ Therefore, he sees style not as an
objective reality conveyed by linguistic
structures but as an impression subjectively
constructed in the mind of the addressee
(reader).
⚫ His argument is that: “the literary
phenomenon is a dialectic between text and
reader.” (1978: 1). And any purely linguistic,
structural description of style will pass no
distinction between the stylistic and the
linguistic aspects of a message
 Reader-Response Stylistics

⚫ According to Riffaterre, any analysis of style

should pay attention not only to the text but to
‘the whole act of communication’ of which
the reader is an essential constituent.
Stylistics, Riffaterre defines, as that which:
studies the act of communication not as
merely producing a verbal chain, not as bearing
the imprint of the speaker’s personality, and
as compelling the addressee’s attention.
⚫ To delineate the stylistic devices, Riffaterre
argues, the feedback of the reader has to
be taken to full consideration. In other
words, the analysis of a literary text and its
stylistic devices cannot be dissociated from the
reader’s response.
Thank
s