Style in fiction

A linguistic introduction to
English fictional prose
GEOFFREY N.LEECH
MICHAEL H.SHORT
 ‘ I would maintain that a formulate observation by
means of words is not to cause the artistic beauty to
evaporate in vain intellectualities; rather, it makes for a
widening and deepening of the aesthetic taste. It is only a
frivolous love that cannot survive intellectual definition;
great love prospers with understanding’.

Spitzer
 THE SCOPE OF THE BOOK
• The book concentrates on fictional prose, but
much of what is said can be also adapted to
non-fictional prose.
• Illustrations are taken from the eighteenth to the
twentieth centuries, to cover the period of the
rise and development of the novel as a major
literary form
• It focuses on the most tangible domain of style,
where the reader’s response is most immediate,
and where the techniques of stylistics can be
most demonstrably applied.
 THE DESIGN OF THE BOOK
• Part 1: ‘Approaches and methods’
• Part 2: ‘Aspects of style’
 Part 1
‘Approaches and methods’
• Chs 1 and 2: examine differing views of what
style means and how it should be studied.
• Ch 3: presents an informal technique of stylistic
analysis, which is illustrated by a comparison of
three passages.
• Ch 4: shows how style can be studied in terms
of forms which are linguistically equivalent at
some level (stylistic variants), and the literary or
communicative function associated with the
choice of one variant or another (stylistic
values).
 Part 2
‘Aspects of style’
• This part investigates different kinds of stylistic values
more closely.
• Ch 6: shows the way in which language conceptualizes
the fiction
• Ch 7: considers the way in which language presents the
fiction in linear, textual form.
• Chs 8 to 10: present the ways in which language
represents the fiction through the social dimension
language use:
Through the relation between author and reader
Through the participation in literary discourse of fictional
speakers and hearers
THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK
• Leading students to towards a more active
engagement with the study of prose style
• After working through these passages
they can go on to apply similar methods to
passages and works of their choice.
 STYLE IN FICTION

‘Approaches and methods’

It examines differing views of

what style means and
how it should be studied

Chapter one Chapter two

Chapter three
‘A method of analysis
Chapter four
‘Style and choice’ ‘Style, text, and frequency’
and some examples’
‘Level of style’
 CHAPTER ONE
‘STYLE AND CHOICE’
The task of this chapter is to:
Investigate the phenomenon of style in
general terms
Take account of the various ways in which
the word ‘style’ has been used in the past
 Work through definitions towards a richer
appreciation of what literary style is and
how it can be analysed.
 STYLE AND CHOICE
CHAPTER STRUCTURE
1.The domain of style 4.Comparing dualism and
2.Stylistics monism
3.Style and content 5.Pluralism: analysing style
3.1 Style as the ‘dress of in terms of functions
thought’: one kind of 6.Multilevel approach to
dualism style
3.2 Style as manner of
expression: another 7.Conclusion: meanings of
kind of dualism style
3.3 The inseparability
of style and content:
monism
 1.THE DOMAIN OF STYLE
• Swiss linguist Saussure’s distinction
between:
• Langue: the code of or system of rules
common to speakers of a language (such
as English)
• Parole: the particular uses of this system,
or selections from this system, which
speakers or writers make on this occasion.
 Style

• Pertains to parole: it is selection from a

total linguistic repertoire that constitutes a
style.
 Style
• Can be applied to both spoken and written, both
literary and non-literary varieties of language
• But by tradition, it is associated with written
literary texts:
The term has been applied to the linguistic
habits of a particular writer
To the way language is used in a particular
genre, period, school of writing.
 Style is a relational term
• We talk about the ‘the style of x’, referring
through ‘style’ to characteristics of language use,
and correlating these to with some extralinguistic
x, which we may call the stylistic DOMAIN
• The x (writer, period) defines some corpus of
writings in which the characteristics of language
use are to be found.
• But the more extensive and varied the corpus of
writings, the more difficult it is to identify a
common set of linguistic habits( even to the
authorial style)
 STYLE AND AUTHOR’S
PERSONALITY
• Lat.’Stylus virum arguit’ ( eng.’The style
proclaims the man’)
Sometimes the author’s identity is given
away by some small detail reflecting a
habit of expression or thought.
But we are mostly considering:
 Style of text
Style comprehends the linguistic
characteristics of a particular text so
through texts :

It is easier to consider what words or

structures are chosen in preference to
others.
Examine the interrelations between one
choice of language and other.
 1.2 STYLISTICS
Texts are the natural focus for our study
also because:
• Within a text it is possible to be more
specific about how language serves a
particular artistic function.
 Literary stylistics
• Has the goal of explaining the relation
between language and artistic function.
• Their goal is to relate the critic’s concern
of aesthetic appreciation ( comprehends
both critical evaluation and interpretation)
with the linguist’s concern of linguistic
description.
 1.2 STYLISTICS

Literary stylistics has the goal:

• Of explaining the relation between language and artistic
function:
• Linguistic angle: “Why does the author here choose to
express himself in this particular way?”
• Critics: “How is such-and-such an aesthetic effect
achieved through language?”

• To relate the critic’s concern of aesthetic appreciation

(comprehends both critical evaluation and interpretation)
with the linguist’s concern of linguistic description.
 But: at which end do we start, the
aesthetic or the linguistic?
• Spitzer: the ‘Philological Circle’:
The task of linguistic-literary explanation proceeded by the
movement to and fro from linguistic details to the literary
‘centre’ of a work or a writer’s art.
There is a cyclic motion:
– Whereby linguistic observation stimulates or modifies literary
insight
– Whereby literary insight stimulates further linguistic observation
There is no logical starting point since we bring to a literary
text simultaneously two faculties:
Our ability to respond to it as a literary work
Our ability to observe its language
 Difference between style and
literary stylistics
• In studying style:

Try to identify features of text which remain

constant whatever the artistic motivations of the
writer

• In studying literary stylistics:

Features determined by artistic motivations are of

primary interest.
 1.3 STYLE AND CONTENT
Since the aim of the book is studying
language as used in literary texts and
relating it to its artistic functions, it is useful
to consider other definitions of style.
 Conflicting views of the use of
language in licterature
• Dualist approach:

• Assumes the dualism between form and meaning

• Considers style as a ‘way of writing’ or ‘a mode of
experience’
• Monist view:

• In Flaubert’s words ‘it is like body and soul, form

and content for me are one’
 Dualism and ‘style as the dress of
thought’
• Distinguishes between what a writer has
to say and how it is presented to the
reader.
• Renaissance and rationalist and
mannerist approaches.
• French stylisticians:
Wesley
Bally and Riffaterre
Roland Barthes
 During the Renaissance
• Pope defined wit as:
‘nature to advantage dressed
what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed’.

• Sidney and Lyly spoke about ‘artificial style’:

Its schematism of form cannot be divorced from the
schematic relation between the ideas being presented.
 French Stylisticians
• Wesley: ‘Style is the dress of thought; a modern dress,
neat, but not gaudy, will true critics please’.
• It is possible to have a manner of writing in which there is no style,
in which content is presented in its nakedness.

• Bally and Riffaterre:

• Style is that expressive or emotive element of language which is
added to the neutral presentation of the message itself.
– Es)’Not bloody likely’(has a style)
– Es)’No’does not.

• Roland Barthes: mode of ‘writing at degree zero’

which achieves a style of assence
which is ideal.
 But: how can we judge when the
factor of style is absent?
• Every word has some associations:
Emotive
Moral
Ideological
in addition to its brute sense.

• Style is a property of all texts and the idea

of style as an ‘optional extra’ must be
rejected.
 Dualism and style as manner of
expression

Every writer makes choices of expression,

and it is in his ‘way of putting things’, that
style resides.
The contrast between dualism and
monism from an author’s point of
view.
(A)DUALISM (B)MONISM

Choices of content
Choices of expression
CONTENT =choices of content

Choices of expression

FORM
 Dualists and Monists
• Monist: any alteration of form entails a change
of content.
• Dualist: there can be different ways of conveying
the same content.
– Richard Ohmann ( a modern apostle of dualism):
• Considers ‘style’ as ‘a manner of bring something’
– As applied to other art forms (e.g. music) and to varied activities
(e.g. playing the piano)
In the style therefore, there are assumed to be some
– INVARIANT elements which have to be performed, but also
– VARIANT ways in which the individual may perform them.
 Richard Ohmann
• He concentrates on the grammatical aspect of
style.
• He appeals to Tranformational Grammar which
postulates two main kind of rules:
Phrase Structure Rules
Transformational Rules
• which determine style because they change the form of a
basic sentence type.
– Change an active construction to a passive
– Combine two or more simple sentence structures into a single
more complex unit
– Delete elements from the structure.
 Richar Ohmann
• He wants to see what happen if he applies this
rules to a text, and in particular to ‘The Bear’, by
Faulkner.
• The resulting ‘Ohmannized’ Faulkner consists of
a sequence of short, atomic sentences:
He has nullified the effect of only a few
transformations
So his point is:
• The elimination of these transformations also eliminates the
author’s quality of the passage
• The author’s style is distinguished by a heavy use, in this
case, of these transformations.
– Which in general terms happen to be rules which introduce and
condense syntactic complexity.
Ohmann and modern linguistics
• The assumption that transformations represent
paraphrase relations has been undermined
Cases in which the passive and deletion transformations which
occur in some sentences, do not preserve the same ‘logical
content’
• It is widely held that the basic logical content of a
sentence can be represented as a set of elementary
prepositions, which, together with their iterrelations,
constitute its ‘deep structure’ or ‘semantic representation’
• Replaced some terms in his paraphrase:
SENSE: the basic, logical, conceptual, paraphrasable meaning
SIGNIFICANCE: the total of what is communicated to the world
by a given sentence or text.
 Stylistic value
which an enlightened dualist has
searched
• In a writer’s choice to express his sense in this rather
that that way.
SENSE +STYLISTIC = (total) SIGNIFICANCE

*Ohmann’s detransforming technique seems to provide

some linguistic basis for the idea of linguistic ‘neutrality’.
this is limited to the grammatical aspect of style
Nevertheless the degree to which a writer complicates his style
by applying syntactic transformations might be one linguistic
measure of markedness.
 Monism and the inseparability of
style and content
• Dualist’s notion of paraphrase rests on the
assumption that there is some basic
sense that can be preserved in different
renderings.
In poetry paraphrase becomes problematic
• Terence Hawkes: ‘Metaphor…is not fanciful
embroidery of the facts. It is a way of experiencing
the facts’.
– It denies us a literal sense and induces us to make
sense
e.g. to find the interpretations beyond the
truthfunctional meaning captured by parafrase.
 Stylistic Monism
• Finds its strongest ground in poetry
Through metaphor, irony and ambiguity,
meaning becomes multivalued and sense
looses its primacy.
• Its manifestations
A tenet of the New Critics
Rejected that a poem conveys a message,
preferring to see it as an autonomous verbal
artefact.
Stylistic Monism and its exponents
• Philosophy of Croce
• One-form-one-meaning of
pretransformation linguistic
• In some authors:

– Tolstoy ( a prose writer) said that the content

of a work of art in its entirety can be
expressed only by itself.
 Lodge in ‘Language of fiction’
• A novel is a verbal artifact, so there can be no
separation of the author’s creation of a fiction of
plot, character, social and moral life, from the
language in which it is portrayed.
• He sees no difference between the kind of
choice a writer makes in deciding to call a
character dark or fair, and the choice between
dark and swarthy.
All the choices he makes are equally matters of
language.
 1.4 Comparing Dualism and
Monism
• Anthony Burgess in ‘Joysprik’ divided
novelists into Class I and Class II:
II
– Class I:
I is one in whose work language is a
zero quality, transparent and unseductive, the
overtones of connotation and ambiguity totally
damped.
– Class II : is one for whom ‘ambiguities’, puns
and centrifugal connotation are to be enjoyed
rather than regretted, and whose books lose a
great deal when adopted to a visual medium.
 Prose varies in the amount of
aesthetic interest which attaches
to a linguistic form
In a work it is possible to envisage
a spectrum extending :
• Between two extremes of :
‘Language use’ and
‘Language exploitation’
• Between
– Prose, which conforms to the code (Saussure
langue) and normal expectations of
communication and
– Prose which deviates from the code in
exploring new frontiers of communication
 Prague school of poetics
• Has distinguished th ‘poetic function’ of
language by its FOREGROUNDING or
DEAUTOMATIZATION of the linguistic code:

– The aesthetic exploitation of language takes the form

of surprising a reader into a fresh awareness of the
linguistic medium which is usually considered an
automatized background of communication

– This foregrounding may deny the normally expected

clues of context and coherence.
Transparent and Opaque qualities
of prose syle
• Burgess’s Class I is transparent:
The reader need not become consciously
aware of the medium through which sense is
conveyed to him
• Class II prose is opaque:
The medium attracts attention in its own right;
and interpretation of sense may be obstructed
by abnormalities in lexis and in grammatical
features of medium.
 Paradox in language
To be truly creative, an artist must be
destructive:
destructive of rules, conventions and
expectations.

And the reader must fill in the gaps of

sense.
 1.5 Pluralism: analysing style in
terms of functions
• Language performs a number of different
functions
• Any piece of language is the result of
choices made on different functional levels
• It wants to distinguish various strands of
meaning according to the various
functions (vs dualist’s division between
‘expression’ and ‘content’
Language is intrinsically multifunctional so
even the simplest utterance conveys
more than one kind of meaning.

*(vs dualism: there is some unitary

conceptual content in every piece of
writing).
 Functional classifications of
language in literary studies
• A. Richards in ‘Practical Criticism’ (1929),
distinguishes 4 types of function and 4 of
meaning:
– Sense
– Feeling
– Tone
– Intention
• Jakobson (1906) distinguishes 6 functions:
– Referential
– Emotive
– Conative
– Phatic
– Poetic
– Metalinguistic
Each corresponding to one essential aspect of the
discourse situation.
• Halliday distinguishes 3 functions:

– Ideational
– Interpersonal
– Textual

They disagree on how functions are manifested in literary

language:
• Richards: in poetry the function of ‘feeling’ tends to
dominate that of ‘sense’.
• Jakobson: ‘poetic’ function which dominates in poetry.
• Halliday: different kinds of literary writing may
foreground different functions.
 Dualism and Pluralism
Ohmann (1964) Halliday (1970)
• (A) ‘content’( phrase • (A) Ideational function
structure)

• (B) ‘expression’ • (B) Textual funcion

( optional
transformations)
• (C) Interpersonal
function
• (C)
 Pluralism and Monism
• Similarity:
Pluralism and Monism both state that all linguistic
choices are both meaningful and stylistic
• Differences:
Pluralists can show how choices of language are
interrelated to one another within a network of
functional choices:
– What choices a writer makes can be seen against the
background of relations of contrast and dependence
between one choice and another.
1.6 Multilevel approach to style
• Pros and cons of Dualism
– Can say nothing about how language creates
a particular cognitive view of things, what
Fowler calls MINDSTYLE.
– It captures the insight that two pieces of
language can be seen as alternative ways of
saying the same thing
• There can be stylistic variants with different style
values (what the writer might have said but didn’t)
 Pros and cons of Halliday’s
approach
• Even choices which are clearly dictated by subject matter are part of
style
– e.g. butter, flour are parts of the style a cookery book.
– But applied to non-fictional language it fails
• e.g. if the author replace clavicle by thighbone is no longer a matter of
stylistic variation but of fact (disaster for the patient)
– The referential, truth-functional nature of language is present in fiction
and is creates a mock –reality.
– Language is used in fiction to project a world ‘beyond language’, in that
we use also our knowledge of the real world
• e.g. ‘The stick began to grow shorter at both ends’
• ‘Then it shot out to full length again’
• Lok saw the man draw the bow and realized it
Therefore, some aspects of language have to do do with
the referential function and these must be distinguished
from those which have to do with stylistic variation.
variation
 The dualist’s notion of invariant
content and variable style
• ‘content’ fails to discriminate between the
philosopher’s concepts of SENSE and
REFERENCE:
– what a linguistic form means and what it
refers to.
• There can be therefore :
alternative CONCEPTUALIZATIONS of the
same event
Alternative syntactic expressions of the same
sense
 The dualist’s diagram
(A) Variant conceptualizations and (B) Variant expressions
( Surface Syntax Sense )
Sense
The fiction

• The fiction remains the invariant element:

– from the point of view of linguistic variation, must be
taken for granted.
– But the author is free to order his universe as he
wants, but for the purposes of stylistic variation we
are only interested in those choices of language
which do not involve change in the fictional universe.
 As a work of fiction, a novel has a
more abstract level of existence:
• Which is partly independent of the language
through which it is represented
In fact two distinct kinds of descriptive statement can
be made about a verbal work of art:
It can be described as a linguistic text
– Contains simple words, more abstract than concrete nouns, etc.
– Is written in ordinate/lucid/vigorous/colloquial language, etc.
It can be described as we might describe other fictional
forms:
Contains several Neanderthal characters
Is about a woman who kills her husband
Is about events which take place in nineteenth century Africa.
The way we acquire ‘knowledge’ of a fictional world
has much in common with the way we acquire
indirect knowledge, through language, of the real
world.

A novel therefore exists :

• As a fiction and as a text
• Lodge: ‘it is a text-maker that the novelist works
in language, and it is a fiction-maker that he
works through language.
• This is a multilevel view of style, which is
composed of elements of dualism and
pluralism.
pluralism

• We have distinguished two levels of

stylistic variation:

– That of sense reference

– That of syntax sense
 1.7 Conclusion: meanings of style
• What does ‘style’
style mean?
– (i) is a way in which language is used: ie it belongs to parole
rather than to langue.
– (ii) therefore style consists in choices made from the repertoire
of the language.
– (iii) A style is defined in terms of a domain of language use (eg
what choices are made by a particular genre, or in a particular
text)
– (iv) Stylistics (or the study of style) has typically been
concentrated with literary language.
– (v) Literary stylistics is typically concentrated with explaining the
relation between style and literary or aesthetic function.
– (vi) Style is relatively transparent or opaque: transparency
implies paraphrasability; opacity implies that a text cannot be
adequately paraphrased, and that interpretation of the text
depends greatly on the creative imagination of the reader.
(vii)Stylistic choice is limited to those aspects of
linguistic choice which concern alternative ways
of rendering the same subject matter.
– This is STYLE2 , different from ‘style’ as a linguistic
choice in general.
– It is possible to distinguish between what the writer
chooses to talk about and how he chooses to do it
So the study of the literary function of language can be
directed
– towards the stylistic values associated with stylistic variants
alias with forms of language which can be seen as equivalent in
terms of the ‘referential reality’ they describe
This does not work when it comes to opaque literary
language
The writer tends towards the innovative techniques of poetry
Where the study of foregrounding is a better guide to the
aesthetic function of language than the study of stylistic
variants
There is no one model of prose style which
is applicable to all texts.

• Style2 is the concept used in exploringthe

nature of stylistic value
As a basis for understanding the detailed
workings of stylistic effect.

– Style1is the more general concept

– It is used when we try to give a stylistic
characterization of a whole text.