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TYPES OF STYLISTICS

Diri I. TEILANYO &


Priscilla O. EFE-OBUKE

Introduction

Before delving into the murky waters of types of stylistics, it may be


useful to give some definitions of stylistics itself. This is essential because
the different types of stylistics derive from these notions or definitions of
stylistics. What is stylistics and what does it entail? Some linguists have
even asked the curious question “who is stylistics?” (Short 1-34) If questions
about stylistics are asked in the light of the personal (human) interrogative
pronoun “who,” it presupposes that the subject stylistics is gender-sensitive.
This in turn is suggestive of the fact that there are more than one type, or
even several types, of stylistics.

Stylistics has been defined by a lot of scholars. In a majority of their


definitions is the recurrent concept of “style”. We shall look at what others
have said about the term “stylistics” before we proffer our own definition of
the term.

Nils Erik Enkvist considers the multi-faceted nature of stylistics and


its relationship with the disciplines of linguistics and literary study:

We may… regard stylistics as a


subdepartment of linguistics and give it a
special subsection dealing with the
peculiarities of literary texts. We may choose
to make stylistics a subdepartment of literary
study which may draw on linguistic methods.
Or we may regard stylistics as an
autonomous discipline which draws freely,
and eclectically, on methods from linguistics
and from literary study. (27)

A summation of Enkvist’s explanation would be that stylistics straddles both


linguistics and literary analysis. This mediating role which stylistics plays
between linguistic description and literary appreciation has been
represented diagrammatically by Leo Spitzer in his “philological circle”
(Leech and Short 13-14).

Hartman and Stork describe stylistics as “the application of linguistic


knowledge to the study of style” (223). Geoffrey N. Leech describes stylistics
simply as “the study of literary style, or… the style of the use of language in
literature” (1). M. H. Abrams, after reviewing different definitions of
stylistics, concludes that

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[stylistics] is expanded so as to incorporate
most of the concerns of both traditional
literary criticism and traditional rhetoric.. it
insists on the need to be objective by focusing
sharply on the text itself and by setting out to
discover the ‘rules’ governing the process by
which linguistic elements and patterns in a
text accomplish their meanings and literary
effects. (284)

Mick Short asks the question, “Who is stylistics?” and describes “her” as a
friend of his. He says “she” is an approach to the analysis of literary texts
using linguistic description” (1).

All the above notions consider stylistics as a hybrid discipline criss-


crossing literary criticism and linguistics. But linguistics has not always
been considered as an inalienable part of stylistics. For example, Geoffrey N.
Leech and Michael H. Short define stylistics in very broad terms as “the
(linguistic) study of style” (13). This notion gives us two options: stylistics
could be linguistic or non-linguistic. The non-linguistic notion of stylistics
would relate to the discussion of style by general literary critics and other
dilettanti who would discuss the artistic elements of some linguistic or non-
linguistic event or object without applying linguistic tools.

However, this non-linguistic notion of stylistics is not of much use to


us here. Indeed, it has been suggested that the –ics element in the word
“stylistics” is taken from “linguistics” and appended to “style” to form a kind
of blend. But even within the linguistic notion of stylistics, the concept may
be given both literary and non-literary orientations. For example, the work of
David Crystal and Derek Davy adopts this broad linguistic view of stylistics.
In other words, stylistics is simply the employment of linguistic tools in the
analysis and interpretation of linguistic events, including religious, sports,
legal and literary discourses.

It is in the rather strict sense that stylistics is used to denote the


linguistic study of literary texts. This is the sense adopted here. Therefore,
for our purpose here, stylistics refers to the employment of the elements,
approaches and procedures of linguistics to the analysis and interpretation
of literary texts or events.

Richard Bradford considers rhetoric as the “most notable predecessor”


of stylistics (3). He says stylistics enables us to identify and name the
distinguishing features of literary texts and to specify the generic and
structural subdivisions of literary texts (xi). A major advantage of stylistics,
according to Ronald Carter and John McRae, is that it “can also help teach
the confidence to make sense of language input which is not always – in real
communicative contexts – neat, clear and immediately comprehensible” (5).

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Katie Wales observes that stylistics, as the study of style, has the goal
“not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake, but in
order to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text;
or in order to relate literary effects to linguistic causes where these are felt to
be relevant” (438).

It is from these varied but interrelated notions and goals of stylistics


that different types of stylistics emerge. Indeed, they are not so much “types”
as they are the approaches, orientations or aims which the analyst adopts or
has in embarking on the analysis. In this direction, Wales points out that
stylistics has varieties “due to the main influences of linguistics and literary
criticism” (437). Besides the influence of these disciplines, some “types” of
stylistics arise from the instrument used in gathering data for analysis as
well as the range of reference the analyst brings to bear on the analysis. The
purpose of the analysis results in further labels. Indeed, some labels may
conflict and create confusion, but they are all names used by several
linguists to describe certain analytical procedures in stylistics, some of
which have come to be tagged “types of stylistics.” In the following
paragraphs, we discuss some of such labels.

1. General Stylistics or Stylistics:

This is stylistics viewed from the broad notion of the linguistic study of
all types of linguistic events from different domains of life. It is used as a
cover term for the analysis of non-literary varieties of language, or registers
(Wales 458). Hence, one can undertake a stylistic study of a religious
sermon, a sport commentary, a legal document, a political speech, a
business conversation, etc.

2. Literary Stylistics:

This is the type of analysis that focuses on literary texts. In the broad
sense, such a study may be linguistic or non-linguistic, but in the more
specialized sense, it is essentially linguistic. To make this linguistic
orientation clearer, the terms linguistic stylistics or linguostylistics are
sometimes employed to denote the linguistic analysis or interpretation of
literary events. Other types of stylistics below are largely subtypes of this
linguistic literary stylistics.

3. Textualist Stylistics (Textlinguistics):

This is the type of stylistics which engaged in an “empty technology” of


a text. It merely identifies the raw linguistic patterns of a (literary) text such
as the phonological, grammatical, lexical and semantic patterns without
attempting to relate these patterns to the message in the text. This approach
was popular at the early stages of the evolution of stylistics as a discipline
where linguists viewed literary texts merely as linguistic events and felt
literary interpretation, involving thematic concerns or artistic significance,
were not of concern to them as linguists, especially as they involved an

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understanding of the artist’s intention which was hardly subject to the
objective verifiability emphasized by the scientific claim of modern
linguistics.

4. Interpretative Stylistics:

This is the practice engaged in by most stylisticians nowadays. It


involves the analysis of the linguistic data in a (literary) text, the unravelling
of the content or artistic value of the text and the marrying of these two. As
depicted in Leo Spitzer’s philological circle, the interpretative stylistician
relates linguistic description to literary appreciation by seeking artistic
function and relating it to the linguistic evidence or first seeking the
linguistic features in the text and relating it to the artistic motivation. The
belief is that the linguistic patterns are chosen deliberately to express
certain artistic or literary goals and that the two can hardly be divorced.
Interpretative stylisticians see themselves as both linguists and literary
critics and integrate the roles of the two scholars. This may be seen as the
more wholistic approach to literary stylistics or the analysis of literary texts
in general.

5. Formalist and Functional Stylistics:

These terms may be viewed as alternatives for textualist stylistics and


interpretative stylistics respectively as discussed above. Formalist stylistics
concentrates on the linguistic forms in the texts, paying little attention to
the function of these forms in relation to the overall content of the text.
Conversely, functional stylistics emphasizes the contextual function that the
linguistic elements are used to perform. (See Taylor and Toolan)

6. Evaluative Stylistics:

This is a term used by Richard Bradford to designate the type of


analysis which uses linguistic tools to assess or measure the worth or merits
and demerits of a text. It assumes that the quality of a text is revealed in the
quality of language patterns it employs. Such analyses may involve the
juxtaposition of two or more texts for comparative evaluation.

7. Discourse Stylistics:

This is the stylistic approach which employs the procedures and


terminology of discourse analysis in the explication of literary language use.
Ronald Carter explains it this way:

[discourse stylistics] operates under the direct


influence of work in pragmatics, discourse
analysis and text linguistics, and this work
continues to provide the field of stylistics with
increasingly sophisticated means of
discussing both longer stretches of text and,

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indeed, longer texts…. In the basic
elementary definition, it is the application of
discourse analysis to literature. (5)

Thus, an advantage of the discourse analysis approach is that it enables us


to study longer stretches of language beyond sentences, which traditional
linguistics may not reach. Such terms as “cohesion,” “coherence,” “location,”
“perlocution,” “maxim,” “implicature,” “speech acts,” etc which are regular in
pure discourse analysis are employed in literary explication.

8. Contextualist Stylistics:

This has various factions that are united in their emphasis on the
ways in which literary style is formed and influenced by its contexts. These
involve (1) the competence and disposition of the reader; (2) the prevailing
sociocultural forces that dominate all linguistic discourse, including
literature; and (3) the systems of signification through which we process and
interpret all phenomena, linguistic and non-linguistic, literary and non-
literary” (Bradford 73).

What happens with contextual stylistics is that it takes into


cognizance the various contexts in which a stylistic analysis is done. It is
actually reader-centred.

9. Phonostylistics:

This has been described by Hartman and Stork as “the study of the
expressive function of sounds” (223). In practice, phonostylistics may not be
considered as a distinct type of stylistics but rather as one of the
phonological levels at which a stylistician could analyse a text, (other levels
of linguistic analysis being the grammatical, the syntactic and the
morphological, the lexical (vocabulary), the semantic and the contextual).
Such a phonological analysis would involve the identification (and functional
interpretation) of both the segmental patterns (vowels and consonants) and
suprasegmental features (syllable, stress, rhythm, tone, intonation, etc).
Phonological schemes like alliteration, assonance, consonance, chiming,
volume, onomatopocia, etc are discussed.

10. Sociostylistics:

This is actually a subject which studies, for instance, the language of


writers considered as social groups (e.g. the Elizabethan University wits,
pamphleteers, or fashions in language) (Wales 438). The emphasis is on how
the language identifies particular socio-literary movements such as the
metaphysicals, the romanticists, African writers, imagists, expressionists,
modernists etc.

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11. Feminist Stylistics:

In the introductory pages of Sara Mills’ Feminist Stylistics, she


describes the phrase feminist stylistics as one which best sums up her
concern “first and foremost with an analysis which identifies itself as
feminist and which uses linguistic or language analysis to examine texts”
(1). So the concern of feminist stylistics, according to Mills, is beyond only
describing sexism in texts but is broadened to “analyse the way that point of
view, agency, metaphor or transitivity are inexpectedly related to matters of
gender, to discover whether women’s writing practices can be described and
so on” (1).

Bradford sees feminist stylistics as having a view of “discourse as


something which transmits social and institutionalized prejudices and
ideologies, specifically the respective roles, the mental and behavioural
characteristics of men and women” (86).

It is apparent from the two view points that feminist stylistics cannot
be divorced from sexism and gender-oriented issues.

12. Computational Stylistics:

This is a subdiscipline of computational linguistics. It evolved in the


1960s and involves the use of statistics and other data that are readily
generated by the computer to treat different problems of style. In the area of
“stylometry,” the computer is used to generate data on the types, number
and length of words and sentences which aid the stylistician in his study of
texts, ensuring the objectivity required. Such data from different texts may
even be used for comparative purposes as well as for the authentification of
authorship. For example, stylometric data may be used to determine which
author a piece of disputed writing belongs to according to whether the
stylometric data in it conform to stylometric data already associated with the
author. The risk here are that it forecloses the possibility of an author
changing his style from text to text and the possibility of two authors writing
alike.

13. Expressive Stylistics:

This approach is often considered “old-fashioned” (Wales 166) in


seemingly upholding the view “Stylus virum arguit” (“The style proclaims the
man,” that is the author). This approach emphasizes an identification of how
the style, the linguistic elements, reveal the personality or “soul” of the
author. It pursues the belief that the artists employ language to express
their inner selves. Thus, there is the concept of style as idiolect, that each
language user has some linguistic traits that not only mark him/her out but
also expresses his/her personality.

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The obvious weakness of this approach is the probability that writers
change their personality and language over time and text and that a change
in one does not necessarily accompany a change in the other.

14. Pedagogical Stylistics:

This refers to the employment of stylistic analysis for teaching and


learning purposes. Literary texts may sometimes be difficult for learners to
appreciate. Hence, a teacher may analyse the linguistic patterns in the text,
breaking down complex linguistic units to smaller ones, converting excerpts
in verse form prosaic form, hyperbaton (syntactic inversion) to regular forms
in the belief that such will help the learner to grasp the message therein.

Wales remarks on this as follows:

Because of its eclecticism, stylistics has


increasingly come to be used as a teaching
tool in language and literature studies for
both native and foreign speakers of English;
what can be termed pedagogical stylistics.
(438)

Carter and McRae claim that stylistics in its pedagogical application “has
been accused of tending towards the simplistic” (xxxi). However, since the
aim of teaching and learning is to make things clearer or simpler than they
seem, pedagogical stylistics would be considered a positive development.

15. Radical Stylistics:

This is a term introduced by D. Burton in 1982 to designate a stylistic


approach which tends to go beyond the identification of the artistic effects of
language use to analyse how language is used to express different ideologies
of world views. The radical stylistician is interested in the choice of linguistic
patterns to reflect such ideological slants as communism, socialism,
capitalism, welfarism, etc. Thus, the stylistician attempts to discover in the
text certain jargons associated with such ideologies. This is allied to
sociological criticism. The label suggests that such an analyst would have a
passion for the reflection or rejection of an ideological bias.

16. New Stylistics:

This is a rather vague term used to denote some fresh models of


stylistic analysis. Such models cease to be “new” as soon as “newer” models
evolve. For example, Leo Spitzer’s ideas about stylistics as one of its
originators in Western Europe were considered “new.”

However, the term is often applied more consistently to the studies in


the West from the 1970s which employed the latest principles of

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structuralism, poetics and reader-response criticism in the analysis of
literary texts.

Conclusion

From the foregoing, it is obvious that while there are different


approaches or types of stylistic analysis, there are several overlaps between
many and the dividing line between some is rather thin.

Accordingly, it may not be satisfactory or convenient for a stylistician


to be rigid on a particular type to employ. Indeed, stylistics being a
multidisciplinary discipline often adopts an eclectic orientation. Thus, in the
analysis of a particular text, a stylistician may employ more than one tool or
approach depending on the data that is evident in the text, the analyst’s
resourcefulness in his or her range of reference for the identification of
evidence and interpretation of such evidence.

WORKS CITED

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. International ed. Forthworth:


Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1993.

Bradford, Richard. Stylistics. London: Routledge, 1997.

Carter, Roland, and John McRae. Introduction. Language, Literature and the
Learner.
Ed. Roland Carter and John McRae. London: Longman, 1996. xix-
xxviii.

Carter, Roland. “Look both Ways before Crossing: Developments in the


Language and
Literature Classroom.” Carter and McRae Language, Literature 1-15.

Crystal, David and Derek Davy. Investigating English Style. New York:
Longman, 1992.

Enkvist, Nils Erik. Linguistic Stylistics. Hague: Mouton, 1913.

Hartman, R.R. and F.C. Stork. Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.


Essex: Applied
Science, 1972.

Leech, Geoffrey. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. New York: Longman,


1969.

Leech, Geoffrey and Michael Short. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction


to English
Fictional Prose. London: Longman, 1981.

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Mills, Sara. Feminist Stylistics. London: Routledge. 1995.

Short, Mick. Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London:
Longman,
1996.

Taylor, T. J., and M. Toolan. “Recent Trends in Stylistics.” Journal of Literary


Semantics
13 (1984): 57-19.

Wales, Katie. A Dictionary of Stylistics. London: Longman, 1990.

Widdowson, H.G. Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature. Essex:


Longman,1975.

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