Style and Stylistics
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used for reporting in Introduction to Stylistics includes the types of style (expository/argumentative, descriptive, narrative, persuasive) basic principles in stylistic analysis, teaching of language and literature: a case for stylistics, and stylistics and levels of language
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Style and Stylistics
- 2. • comprises many literary devices that an author employs to create a distinct feel for a work. style STYLE S T Y L E sTyLe S t Y l E • the way a writer writes. • the technique which an individual author uses in his writing.
- 3. Orators Winston Churchill • “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Martin Luther King Jr. • “I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
- 4. Authors (James Joyce) “The Dead” from Dubliners • A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. Finnegan’s Wake • riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
- 5. Authors (George Orwell) “Shooting an Elephant” from Facing Unpleasant Facts • In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. 1984 • Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
- 6. Authors (George Orwell) “Shooting an Elephant” from Facing Unpleasant Facts • In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. 1984 • Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
- 7. Expository or Argumentative Style - subject-oriented style • The pleasures of the imagination, taken in their full extent, are not so gross as those of sense… A man of polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures… A man should endeavour, therefore, to make the sphere of his innocent pleasures as wide as possible, that he may retire into them with safety … Delightful scenes, whether in nature, painting, or poetry, have a kindly influence on the body, as well as the mind, and not only serve to clear and brighten the imagination, but are able to disperse grief and melancholy… The Pleasures of Imagination” by Joseph Addison
- 8. Descriptive style - the author focuses on describing an event, a character or a place in detail. •A drop fell on the apple tree, Another on the roof, And made the gables laugh, The breezes brought dejected lutes, And bathed them in the glee; And signed the fete away. (Summer Shower by Emily Dickinson)
- 9. Descriptive style • “The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden… The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through… or circling with monotonous insistence…” An excerpt from Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- 10. Narrative style • It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three.’ By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, … The guests are met, the feast is set: Mayst hear the merry din. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- 11. Persuasive style • the writer tries to give reasons and justification to make the readers believe his point of view. • “I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.” Wiliam Faulkner
- 12. Stylistics study of the devices in languages (such as rhetorical figures and syntactical patterns) that are considered to produce expressive or literary style Bally and Spitzer: style in language arises from the possibility of choice among alternative forms of expression Sapir: relation between style and linguistics 20th Century: looked at relationships between social, contextual, and formal linguistic analysis Fish and Hernstein-Smith: interrogate the logical assumptions underlying stylistics.
- 13. Modern Stylistics A method of textual interpretation in which primacy of place is assigned to language
- 14. •The various forms, patterns and levels that constitute linguistic structure are an important index of the function of the text which in turn acts as a gateway to its interpretation. Why is language important to stylisticians?
- 15. Two Important Caveats of the connection between stylistics and literature •Creativity in language use should not be seen as the exclusive preserve of literary writing •Many forms of discourse often play a high degree of stylistic skill.
- 16. •To explore language •To explore creativity in language use Why is do stylistics?
- 17. Basic Principles in Stylistic Analysis •It should be rigorous. •It should be retrievable. •It should be replicable.
- 18. Language learning and literary study are interdependent and should be seen as complementary at all stages in the educational process. Stylistics is a link between two disciplines: linguistics and literary criticism. Although stylistics entails linguistic analysis, it also develops the learners’ literary competence. Stylistics provides systematic training in those interpretative methods that can lead to ever- increasing appreciation of a writer’s artistry in and through language. Stylistics may be seen as an aid to intuition and a preparation for literary appreciation. Teaching of Language and Literature: A Case for Stylistics
- 19. • The sound of spoken language; the way words are pronouncedPhonology; Phonetics • The patterns of written language; the shape of language on the pageGraphology • The way words are constructed; words and their constituent structureMorphology • The way words combine with other words to form phrases and sentencesSyntax; Grammar • The words we use; the vocabulary of languageLexical Analysis; Lexicology • The meaning of words and sentencesSemantics • The way words and sentences are used in everyday situations; the meaning of language in context.Pragmatics; Discourse analysis Stylistics and Levels of Language
- 20. •On desperate seas long wont to roam Edgar Allan Poe
- 21. •That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
Editor's Notes
- These devices include, but are not limited to, point of view, symbolism, tone, imagery, diction, voice, syntax, and the method of narration. Style is a fundamental aspect of fiction, as it is naturally part of every work of prose written. Some types of writing are required to have a certain style, such as academic or journalistic writing. However, every work of creative writing takes on its own style. 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. Style has been an object of study from ancient times. Aristotle, Cicero, Demetrius, and Quintilian treated style as the proper adornment of thought. In this view, which prevailed throughout the Renaissance period, devices of style can be catalogued. 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. 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. Style is also seen as a mark of character. The Count de Buffon’s famous epigram “Le style est l’homme même” (“Style is the man himself”) in his Discours sur le style (1753), and Arthur Schopenhauer’s definition of style as “the physiognomy of the mind” suggest that, no matter how calculatingly choices may be made, a writer’s style will bear the mark of his personality. An 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.
- In these two contrasting examples of style, we can see a great leap from James Joyce’s earlier works to his later works. His writing style in Dubliners is descriptive yet quite direct. However, in Finnegan’s Wake, Joyce’s writing is almost unintelligible. This line is the first in the novel—note that it doesn’t even start with a capital letter—and already Joyce has used several barely understandable words.
- Here is another set of styles from the same author. George Orwell wrote many essays about his experiences, and uses a very drily witty style. However, when writing perhaps his most famous work of fiction Orwell is decidedly not witty and instead writes in a very cold and blunt style.
- Here is another set of styles from the same author. George Orwell wrote many essays about his experiences, and uses a very drily witty style. However, when writing perhaps his most famous work of fiction Orwell is decidedly not witty and instead writes in a very cold and blunt style.
- 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. An excerpt from “The Pleasures of Imagination” by Joseph Addison The pleasures of the imagination, taken in their full extent, are not so gross as those of sense… A man of polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures… A man should endeavour, therefore, to make the sphere of his innocent pleasures as wide as possible, that he may retire into them with safety … Delightful scenes, whether in nature, painting, or poetry, have a kindly influence on the body, as well as the mind, and not only serve to clear and brighten the imagination, but are able to disperse grief and melancholy… This is an example of expository writing style in which the author describes advantages of imagination with facts and logical sequence and tells his delight of imagination. Then, he discusses its benefits and finally gives opinions in its favor.
- 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 is an excerpt from a poem. A drop fell on the apple tree, Another on the roof, And made the gables laugh, The breezes brought dejected lutes, And bathed them in the glee; And signed the fete away. (Summer Shower by Emily Dickinson) This poem is giving an example of descriptive style. Emily gives a description of a summer rainstorm in detail and visualizes with images so that the readers could visualize this storm in their own minds as if it is actually happening.
- An excerpt from Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde “The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden… The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through… or circling with monotonous insistence…” This is a good example of descriptive writing style since the author gives visualizations, feelings, description of a location and details about bees that could be seen and heard.
- Narrative style Narrative writing style is a type of writing where the writer narrates a story to. It includes short stories, novels, novellas, biographies and poetry. It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three.’ By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, … The guests are met, the feast is set: Mayst hear the merry din. (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) In this poem, Coleridge uses narrative style and tells a story about the ancient mariner. He uses dialogues, disputes, actions and events in a sequence, thus provides a perfect example of the narrative style of writing.
- 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.
- 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. The traditional idea of style as something properly added to thoughts contrasts with the ideas that derive from Charles Bally (1865–1947), the Swiss philologist, and Leo Spitzer (1887–1960), 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 evocative 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 (Algernon Charles Swinburne, Paul Verlaine, Horace, Catullus, Virgil, and much of Latin literature) and literature that is content-based (Homer, Plato, Dante, William Shakespeare) and the near untranslatability Twentieth-century work on stylistics, particularly in Britain (by such scholars as Roger Fowler and M.A.K. Halliday), looked at relationships between social, contextual, and formal linguistic analysis. There were also attempts, as in the work of Stanley Fish and Barbara Herrnstein Smith from the 1970s and 1980s, to interrogate the logical assumptions underlying stylistics.
- This method of inquiry sheds light on the rules of language because styliostics shows us how these rules are broken in certain texts.
- Rigorous – stylistic method should be based on an explicit framework of analysis, derived from models of language and discourse Retrievable – method should be organized through explicit terms and criteria, since there is a wide agreement on the meaning of the terms Replicable – should be sufficiently transparent as to allow other stylisticians to verify them, either by testing them on the same text or applying them beyond the text.
- The impressionistic “slow, dragging” effect of Edgar Allan Poe’s On desperate seas long wont to roam can be made more objective by the linguist’s knowledge of the stress contour or intonation. Here the predominance of the stronger primary and secondary stresses creates the drawn-out interminable effect