STYLISTICS

PROPONENTS
Russian Formalists The most well-known exponent of Russian Formalism was roman jakobson whose
work focused on defining the qualities of what he termed poetic language. According to him, the poetic
function of language is realized in those communicative acts where the focus is on the message for its
own sake as opposed to a communicative act focused on conveying the emotions of the speaker.
Prague Structuralism Jan Mukarovsky was interested in identifying the formal and functional
distinctions between literary and non-literary writing, noting that literary texts deviate from what he
termed the standard language. According to him, the consequence of such deviation is the creation of
a defamiliarizing effect for the reader, something he claimed to be one of the hallmarks of literature.
Jakobson suggests that defamiliarization also results from structural patterning in texts, or, to give its
later name, parallelism. Shklovskys notion of defamiliarization or making strange also entailed a
political notion because he stressed that the function of art is to make people look at the work from a
new perspective. These concepts deviation, parallelism and foregrounding are the foundations of
contemporary stylistics.
European Developments In Leo Spitzers work, we see and approach that will be familiar to any
modern stylistician; namely, the concept of starting with an interpretation of a literary text and then
using a linguistic analysis to validate or invalidate that initial hypothesis. Spitzer rejected purely
impressionistic criticism and his work may thus be seen as a forerunner to later work in stylistics which
embraced the scientific notion of objectivity in analysis.
New Criticism concerned with the description of the aesthetic qualities of a literary text
Practical Criticism interested in the psychological aspects of how readers comprehend texts
Geoffrey Leech demonstrated convincingly that foregounding in texts is intrinsic to literary
interpretation. Te connection beteen analysis and interpretation is strengthened by Leechs concepts of
congruence and cohesion of foregrounding, which goes some considerable way towards refuting
accusations of interpretative positivism.
Chomskyan Linguistics
Explorations in Non-literary Stylisitics While stylistics had so far concentrated on using linguistic tools
to explain literary effect, it had also been the subject of criticism for its eclecticism, its lack of a
methodological and theoretical foundation, and its alleged base in literary criticism. A major focus on
poetry also caused some suspicion in linguistic circles. In the 1960s and early seventies these criticism
were addressed in pat through he development of a branch of stylistics that focused particularly on style
in non-literary language.

Crystal and Davy s concern was how particular social contexts restrict the range of linguistic options
open to speakers
Enkvist a speakers stylistic choices could affect the context for his or her addressees
Halliday Systemic functional grammar related form to function witin the context of the language
system as a whole and had a particular influence on the study of prose fiction.
Carter and Simpson how context affects meaning(pragmatics). Serious stylistic study of drama
Burton appled pragmatic and sociolinguistic insights in the study of dramatic discourse
Short article on discourse analysis applied to drama is a groundbreaking study of how such insights can
be used to uncover aspects of characterization

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

TENETS
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, 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."

"Stylistic analysis attempts to provide a commentary which is objective and

scientific, based on concrete quantifiable data, and applied in a systematic way. .
.
1. Close reading emphasizes differencesbetween literary language and that of
the general speech community . . .. Stylistics, by contrast,
emphasizes connectionsbetween literary language and everyday language. . . .

1. 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."
"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. 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. . . .
[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."
KEY WORDS

STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES