General notes on style and stylistics

OUTLINE

The Notion of Style

The Notion of Stylistics

The Objectives of Stylistics

The Place of Stylistics among other Language-Studying Sciences and its Peculiarities

The Notion of Style

The word has derived from the Latin word “stilus” which meant a sharpened stick used by Romans for writing on wax tablets. In the course of time it came to stand for the product of it.

The concept is so broad that it is hardly possible to regard it as a term. We speak of style in architecture, literature, behaviour, linguistics, dress and other fields of human activity.

Even in linguistics the word style is used so widely that it needs interpretation. The majority of linguists who deal with the subject of style agree that the term applies to the following fields of investigation:

- correspondence between language and expression;

- addition to language;

- technique of expression;

- a literary genre;

- individual style;

- expressive means in language;

- synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea;

- emotional colouring of language;

- a system of special devices called stylistic devices.

In this connection there are many definitions of style. Let us regard some of them:

1. Style is the correspondence between thought and expression. The notion is based on the assumption that language is said to have two functions: it serves as a means of communication and also as a means of shaping one's thoughts. The first function is called communicative, the second - expressive, the latter finds its proper materialization in strings of sentences especially arranged to convey the ideas and also to get the desired response.

Indeed, every sentence may be characterized from two sides: whether or not the string of language forms expressed is something well-known and therefore easily understood and to some extent predictable; whether or not the string of language forms is built anew; is, as it were, an innovation made on the part of the listener to get at the meaning of the utterance and is therefore unpredictable.

The main trend in most of the observations on the interrelation between thought and expression may be summarized as follows: the linguistic form of the idea expressed always reflects the peculiarities of the thought. And vice versa, the character of the thought will always manifest itself in the language forms chosen for the expression of the idea.

2. Style is addition to language. This concept is popular and is upheld in some of the scientific papers on literary criticism. Language and style are regarded as separate bodies, but language can easily dispense with style. Moreover, style as an embellishment of language is viewed as something that hinders understanding. In its extreme, style may dress the thought in such fancy attire that one can hardly get at the idea hidden behind the elaborate design of tricky stylistic devices.

This notion presupposes the use of bare language forms deprived of any stylistic devices and of any expressive means deliberately employed. Perhaps it is due to this notion that the word "style" itself still bears a somewhat derogatory meaning. It is associated with the idea of something pompous, showy artificial, something that is set against simplicity, truthfulness, the natural.

3. Style is technique of expression. In this sense style is generally defined as the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to the interest of the reader. Style in this utilitarian sense should be taught, but it belongs to the realm of grammar, and not to stylistics. It sets up a number of rules as to how to speak and write and discards all kinds of deviations as being violations of the norm. The norm itself becomes rigid, self-sustained and to a very great extent inflexible.

4. Style signifies a literary genre. Thus we speak of classical style or the style of classicism; realistic style; the style of romanticism and so on. On the other hand, the term is widely used in literature, being applied to the various kinds of literary work, the fable, novel, ballad, story etc. The word is also used to denote the way the plot is dealt with, the arrangements of the parts in a literary composition to form the whole, the author’s place and the role in describing and depicting events.

We also speak of the different styles of language. A style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. The peculiar choice of language means is primarily dependent on the aim of communication.

Thus we may distinguish the following styles within the English literary language: 1) the belles-letters style; 2) the public style; 3) the newspaper style; 4) the scientific prose style; 5) the style of official documents and presumably some others. The classification presented here is not arbitrary, the work is still in the observational stage. The classification is not proof against criticism, though no one will deny that the five groups of styles exist in the English literary language.

“Style is a contextually restricted linguistic variation” (Enkvist);

“Style is a selection of non-distinctive features of language” (L. Bloomfield).

5. Individual style/idiostyle/idiolect can also stand for a unique combination of language units, expressive means and stylistic devices peculiar to a given writer, which makes his/her works/utterances easily recognizable. Hence, individual style may be linked to a proper name. The main feature of individual style is idiosyncratic and deliberate choice of language, and the ways the selected elements are treated. “The wording is different because the inner world is different” (N. Kozlov “Fairy tales with philosophical tinge”).

The most frequent definition of style is one expressed by Seymour Chatman: “Style is a product of individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities”. This definition directly deals with the idiosyncrasies peculiar to a given writer. Thus, for instance, we speak of O. Wilde’s idiolect with witticisms in a form of paradoxes, E. Hemingway’s idiolect full of short dialogues with iceberg technique involved, etc.

2. The notion of Stylistics

The academic discipline of stylistics is a twentieth-century invention. Stylistic approach to linguistic facts differs radically from traditional description of language phenomena on the lexical, grammatical and phonetic levels.

There are many definitions of Stylistics as a science. Let’s regard some of them.

Stylistics is a branch of general linguistics which has to do with expressive possibilities of the language – its vocabulary, the structure and the sound arrangement of the sentence or the paragraph. It is a science dealing with rather a complicated phenomenon - the formation of the transferred or figurative meanings.

Stylistics is a language science which deals with the results of the act of communication. (I.R. Galperin). It is the study of varieties of language whose properties position that language in context. For example, the language of advertising, politics, religion, individual authors, etc., or the language of a period in time, all belong in a particular situation. In other words, they all have ‘place’.

The science also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialization, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.

Other features of stylistics include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and people’s dialects, descriptive language, the use of grammar, such as the active voice or passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular language registers, etc.

Many linguists do not like the term ‘stylistics’. The word ‘style’, itself, has several connotations that make it difficult for the term to be defined accurately. However, in Linguistic Criticism (1996), Roger Fowler makes the point that, in non-theoretical usage, the word stylistics makes sense and is useful in referring to an enormous range of literary contexts, such as John Milton’s ‘grand style’, the ‘prose style’ of Henry James, the ‘epic’ and ‘ballad style’ of classical Greek literature, etc. (Fowler, 185) In addition, stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between the form and effects within a particular variety of language. Therefore, stylistics looks at what is ‘going on’ within the language; what the linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals.