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Stylistics. Lecture # 20. Review of lecture 19. Pragmatics is the study of "how to do things with words“ Speech acts.
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Stylistics Lecture # 20
Review of lecture 19 • Pragmatics is the study of "how to do things with words“ • Speech acts
Speech acts include asking for a glass of water, promising to drink a glass of water, threatening to drink a glass of water, ordering someone to drink a glass of water, and so on. • Direct Speech Acts - three basic types • Assertion, question, orders and requests
Review of lecture 19 • Even for three basic speech acts other expressions possible • Indirect speech acts – expressions other than interrogative sentences possible • Appropriate reply directed to speech act meaning rather than literal meaning
Review of lecture 19 • Conventional indirect speech acts – questions, assertions and complaints • Could you close the window? • Would you mind closing the window? • I would like you • performatives
Stylistics • Definition: • A branch of applied linguistics concerned with the study of style in texts, especially (but not exclusively) in literary works. • According to Katie Wales in A Dictionary of Stylistics, 2nd ed. (Pearson, 2001), "The goal of most stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake. • They also 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."
Stylistics • There are various overlapping sub-disciplines of stylistics, including literary stylistics, interpretive stylistics, evaluative stylistics, corpus stylistics, discourse stylistics, feminist stylistics, computational stylistics, and cognitive stylistics.
Stylistics • In the words of Halliday: We can define linguistic stylistics as the description of literary texts by methods derived from general linguistic theory, using the categories of the description of language as a whole. • A comparison of each text by the same or by different authors in the same and in different genres
Stylistics • Stylistics, more commonly, is the scientific study of style. • The term ‘style’ here has to do with those components or features of a literary composition which give to it individual stamp, marking it as the work of particular author and producing a certain effect upon the readers.
Stylistics • Stylistics is not something opposed to literary criticism, for between true literature and linguistics there is no conflict. • The real linguist is at least half a literateur & the real literateur is at least half a linguist. • Stylistics is an attempt to make literary criticism much more scientific.
Stylistics • It is an attempt to make literary criticism objective and precise. • It stresses the need to form a literary grammar of language, a literary transformation and satisfactory definitions of various literary terms, such as ‘style’, ‘poem’, ‘image’, etc. • Stylistic is not statistics either. It is a borderline discipline which gives double challenge to students.
Stylistics • The challenge is of linguistics and literary criticism besides the knowledge of other factors (psychic, social, historical) involved in the study of literature which is primarily a language act of a community. • It requires the combination of artistic gifts and scholarly qualities. It is the result of talent, experience, and faith.
Stylistics • "Stylistics, traditionally known as the study of literary texts using formal linguistic tools, can also be done via sophisticated computer-based applications. • Some stylisticians quantitatively analyse large amounts of data and texts, not possible otherwise, and thus can provide answers to questions such as what is Dickens' writing style in his novels?(Saumya Sharma, “Language Wise.” The Times of India, July 8, 2013)
Stylistics • "The preferred object of study in stylistics is literature, whether that be institutionally sanctioned "Literature' as high art or more popular 'noncanonical' forms of writing. • The traditional connection between stylistics and literature brings with it two important caveats, though. The first is that creativity and innovation in language use should not be seen as the exclusive preserve of literary writing.
Stylistics • Many forms of discourse (advertising, journalism, popular music--even casual conversation) often display a high degree of stylistic dexterity, such that it would be wrong to view dexterity in language use as exclusive to canonical literature.
Stylistics • The second caveat is that the techniques of stylistic analysis are as much about deriving insights about linguistic structure and function as they are about understanding literary texts."(Paul Simpson, Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge, 2004)
Stylistics • Rhetoric, Close Reading, and Stylistics"Stylistics is, in a sense, the modern version of the ancient discipline known as 'rhetoric,' which taught its students how to structure an argument, how to make effective use of figures of speech, and generally how to pattern and vary a speech or a piece of writing so as to produce the maximum impact. . . .
Stylistics • "Stylistic analysis attempts to provide a commentary which is objective and scientific, based on concrete quantifiable data, and applied in a systematic way. . . . The specific differences between conventional close reading and stylistics are as follows:
Stylistics • Close reading emphasizes differences between literary language and that of the general speech community . . .. Stylistics, by contrast, emphasizes connections between literary language and everyday language. . . . Stylistics uses specialized technical terms and concepts which derive from the science of linguistics, terms like 'transitivity,' 'under-lexicalisation,' 'collocation,' and 'cohesion' . . ..
Stylistics • Stylistics makes greater claims to scientific objectivity than does close reading, stressing that its methods and procedures can be learned and applied by all. Hence, its aim is partly the 'demystification' of both literature and criticism." • (Peter Barry, Beginning Theory, 2nd ed. Manchester Univ. Press, 2002)
Stylistics • Aims of Stylistic Analysis"Stylistic analysis, unlike more traditional forms of practical criticism, is not interested primarily in coming up with new and startling interpretations of the texts it examines. • Rather, its main aim is to explicate how our understanding of a text is achieved, by examining in detail the linguistic organization of the text and how a reader needs to interact with that linguistic organization to make sense of it.
Stylistics [T]he 'news' comes from knowing explicitly something that you had only understood intuitively, and from understanding in detail how the author has constructed the text so that it works on us in the way that it does. (Mick Short, "Understanding Conversational Undercurrents in 'The Ebony Tower' by John Fowles." Twentieth-Century Fiction: From Text to Context, edited by Peter Verdonk and Jean Jacques Weber. Routledge, 1995)
Stylistics • Often, such a detailed examination of a text does reveal new aspects of interpretation or help us to see more clearly how a text achieves what it does. • But the main purpose of stylistics is to show how interpretation is achieved, and hence provide support for a particular view of the work under discussion. . . .
Stylistics • Technically speaking, stylistics is the study of the linguistic features of a literary text - phonological, lexical, syntactical – which directly affect the meaning of an utterance. • Enkvist in essay, “On Defining Style” in Linguistics and Style mentions six approaches to style.
Stylistics • They treat style (i) as an embellishment, “a shell surrounding a pre-existing core of thought or expression”, (ii) as the choice between alternate expression, (iii) as a set of individual characteristics, (iv) as deviation from a norm, (v) as set of collective characteristics
Stylistics (vi) as a set of relations among linguistic entities that are stable in terms of wider spans of text than the sentence. Merits and Demerits 1. Style as an embellishment Some definitions mislead us about style
Stylistics • The definitions which regard ‘style’ as an embellishment or addition to central core of thought or expression mislead one to think that plain English has no style, and that some utterances have style while others don’t. • They separate an outer halo of style from the inner core of thought.
Stylistics • They, thus, postulate the existence of pre-linguistic thought or pre-stylistic expression. • In fact, a writer’s original thought cannot be separated from its final garb – what is said cannot be separated from the way it is said. • It is difficult to distinguish between utterances that have a style and that which don’t have a style
Stylistics • Essentially speaking, no sentence is without style 2.Style as choice between alternate expression • No writer can use all the resources of his language at the same time. • The attempt to define style as ‘choice’ is trivial • Difficult to determine why a writer chooses one expression and not the other.
Stylistics • The ordering of language involves grammatical, non-stylistic and stylistic consideration. • Example: In ‘X loves the child’, we can only a use a human subject in place of X and say The father loves the child and we cannot say To eat loves the child. This involves grammatical choice.
Stylistics • In the second sentence ‘to eat’ is not permitted by the laws of English language. • Another type of choice may be the choice between mother and father. • Both the sentences, (1) The father loves the child and (2) The mother loves the child are grammatically possible.
Stylistics • But the speaker would choose only one depending on the situation – such a choice is non-stylistic. • Another type of selection could be the choice between ‘fine woman’ and ‘nice lady’ or between ‘my father’ and ‘my old man’. Both are grammatically possible, even idiomatic; and both have certain range of frames and reference in common.
Stylistics • This type of choice may be labelled stylistic. • So, stylistic choice exists not only in lexis but also in phonetic features (special voice quality, speech, rate etc.), Phonemes (singing/singin’), morphemes (sings/singeth), words, phrases, clauses, sentences and larger units.
Stylistics • Hence, the definitions which treat style as choice too are inadequate. • Various types of choices must be distinguished.
Summary • A branch of applied linguistics concerned with the study of style in texts, especially (but not exclusively) in literary works. • linguistic stylistics - the description of literary texts by methods derived from general linguistic theory, using the categories of the description of language as a whole.
Summary • A comparison of each text by the same or by different authors in the same and in different genres. • Technically speaking, stylistics is the study of the linguistic features of a literary text - phonological, lexical, syntactical
Summary • Style as an embellishment – just ornamentation • Style as choice between alternate expression
