ENGLISH LANGUAGE SERIES — General Editor: Randolph Quirk
iscipline which brings to bear on the analysis of language
inguistics.
vid Crystal and Derek Davy provide a general
written and spoken material,
series of ex
study by Ch “Suggestions for Further Analysis’, which presents
further examples of each type examined in Part Two.
Investigating Style complements two further textbooks on
‘stylistic published in the same series: A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry,
by Geoffrey N. Leech, and Style in Fiction, by Geoffrey N. Leech and Mick
Shore.
David Crystalis Professorial Fellow of the University College of North
Wales, Bangor, and was formerly Professor of Linguistic Science at the
University of Reading. He is the author of the Cambridge Encyclopaedia
of Language (1987). Derek Davy teaches in the Department of English at
the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Front cover illustration by Peter Till
ISBN O-582-55011-4
ENGLISH STYLE
David Crystal & Derek Davy
GLISH: LANGUAGE: SERIESLongman Group UK Lied
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and Associated companies throughout the world
Published in the United States of America
by Langman Ine. Nee York
> Longman Group Lxd 1969
ISBN 0-582-55011-4
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Foreword
effect: style as an evaluative
This has no sty
yy add Pascal to Bufo:
of the delight experienced on encountering
comparison which
broader and so
what is referabl
alll examples o
cemed to give usa
those features that any of us is free to ing to his
¢ and sense of literary value is his purpose
Styles thus placed squar c theoretical discussion
of Part One) within the framework of genera
ved prisnartly within therepertoire
attention
obvious, but of course its importance go
creasingly come into world-wide use, there has
for more information on th ge and the ways
University College London
June, 1969
Preface
Itis always dangerous to write an introductory book about a develop-
ing and controversial field of study, but in the case of stylists, such
book is very necessary at the present time. A great deal has been pub-
lished in and about the subject over the past few years, but there has
been no attempt to provide a meaningful guide to the subject for the
‘general reader. This deficiency is all the more unfortunate as so much
‘Of what has been published is extremely technical, provides but a
partial account ofthe subject, and bears witness toa substantial amount
of disagreement among those most prominent in the field; and while
some of this disagreement centres upon the relatively unimportant
(though nonetheless confusing) problems posed by choice of termin-
ology, much of it concerns fundamental issues of theory and pro-
cedure. There has been a similar lack of attempts to balance the
practical and theoretical sides of the subject: most work has involved
either theoretical discussion with litte illustration, or detailed analysis
ith no explicit theoretical perspective. Much work in stylistics is
vitiated because of analytical methods whose bases have not been
stated clearly enough
By dividing this book into two parts, we have tried to give duc
‘weight to the various tasks which stylistics tries to do. In Part One,
after giving a general idea of what st , we outline a set
piece of language, and the various
ssify the varieties of
yguage of exemplifi-
niques and procedures could be
xs. In Part Two, we
ced for the stylistic a
lustrate our approach by descril detail various ¢:
English. We have tried to .ce between spok
written materials, to present a range of usage running from the most
to the least fa nd to concentrate our attention on those varieties