Stylistics, a branch of

applied linguistics Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, communication rese ...

, is the study and interpretation of texts of all types and/or spoken language in regard to their linguistic and tonal

style Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to: * Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable * Design, the process of creating something * Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...

, where style is the particular

variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

of language used by different individuals and/or in different situations or settings. For example, the

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

, or everyday language may be used among casual friends, whereas more formal language, with respect to

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

, pronunciation or accent, and lexicon or choice of words, is often used in a cover letter and résumé and while speaking during a job interview. As a discipline, stylistics links literary criticism to

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

. It does not function as an autonomous domain on its own, and it can be applied to an understanding of

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

and

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...

as well as linguistics. Sources of study in stylistics may range from canonical works of writing to popular texts, and from

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

copy to

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. N ...

, non-fiction, and

popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

, as well as to political and religious discourse. Indeed, as recent work in critical stylistics, multimodal stylistics and mediated stylistics has made clear, non-literary texts may be of just as much interest to stylisticians as literary ones. Literariness, in other words, is here conceived as 'a point on a cline rather than as an absolute'. Stylistics as a conceptual discipline may attempt to establish principles capable of explaining particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as in the literary production and reception of

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

, the study of

folk art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative. The makers of folk art are typically tr ...

, in the study of spoken

dialects The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

and registers, and can be applied to areas such as

discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse Analysis (discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event) ...

as well as literary criticism. Plain language has different features. Common stylistic features are using dialogue, regional

accents Accent may refer to: Speech and language * Accent (sociolinguistics), way of pronunciation particular to a speaker or group of speakers * Accent (phonetics), prominence given to a particular syllable in a word, or a word in a phrase ** Pitch acce ...

and individual idioms (or

idiolects Idiolect is an individual's unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among a group of people. Th ...

). Stylistically, also sentence length prevalence and language register use.

Early twentieth century

The analysis of literary style goes back to the study of

classical rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

, though modern stylistics has its roots in Russian Formalism and the related

Prague School The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...

of the early twentieth century. In 1909,

Charles Bally __NOTOC__ Charles Bally (; 4 February 1865, Geneva – 10 April 1947, Geneva) was a Swiss linguist from the Geneva School. He lived from 1865 to 1947 and was, like Ferdinand de Saussure, from Switzerland. His parents were Jean Gabriel, a te ...

proposed stylistics as a distinct academic discipline to complement Saussurean linguistics. For Bally, Saussure's linguistics by itself couldn't fully describe the language of personal expression. Bally's programme fits well with the aims of the Prague School. Taking forward the ideas of the Russian Formalists, the Prague School built on the concept of ''

foregrounding Foregrounding is a concept in literary studies concerning making a linguistic utterance (word, clause, phrase, phoneme, etc.) stand out from the surrounding linguistic context, from given literary traditions or from more general world knowledge. It ...

'', where it is assumed that poetic language is considered to stand apart from non-literary background language, by means of '' deviation'' (from the norms of everyday language) or '' parallelism''. According to the Prague School, however, this background language isn't constant, and the relationship between poetic and everyday language is therefore always shifting.

Late twentieth century

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,New Criticism in his ''Closing Statement'' at a conference on stylistics at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...

in 1958. Published as ''Linguistics and Poetics'' in 1960, Jakobson's lecture is often credited with being the first coherent formulation of stylistics, and his argument was that the study of poetic language should be a sub-branch of linguistics. The ''poetic function'' was one of six general functions of language he described in the lecture.

Michael Halliday Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; 13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018) was a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descri ...

is an important figure in the development of British stylistics. His 1971 study ''Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William Golding's The Inheritors'' is a key essay. One of Halliday's contributions has been the use of the term

register Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

to explain the connections between language and its context. For Halliday register is distinct from

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

. Dialect refers to the habitual language of a particular user in a specific geographical or social context. Register describes the choices made by the user, choices which depend on three variables: ''field'' ("what the participants... are actually engaged in doing", for instance, discussing a specific subject or topic),Christopher S. Butler, ''Structure and Function: a Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories'', John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003, p 373. ''

tenor A tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is wide ...

'' (who is taking part in the exchange) and ''mode'' (the use to which the language is being put). Fowler comments that different fields produce different language, most obviously at the level of

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

(Fowler. 1996, 192) The linguist

David Crystal David Crystal, (born 6 July 1941) is a British linguist, academic, and prolific author best known for his works on linguistics and the English language. Family Crystal was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, on 6 July 1941 after his mother had ...

points out that Halliday's 'tenor' stands as a roughly equivalent term for 'style', which is a more specific alternative used by linguists to avoid ambiguity (Crystal. 1985, 292). Halliday's third category, ''mode'', is what he refers to as the symbolic organisation of the situation. Downes recognises two distinct aspects within the category of mode and suggests that not only does it describe the relation to the medium: written, spoken, and so on, but also describes the

of the text (Downes. 1998, 316). Halliday refers to genre as pre-coded language, language that has not simply been used before, but that predetermines the selection of textual meanings. The linguist William Downes makes the point that the principal characteristic of register, no matter how peculiar or diverse, is that it is obvious and immediately recognisable (Downes. 1998, 309).

Literary stylistics

In ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language'', Crystal observes that, in practice, most stylistic analysis has attempted to deal with the complex and 'valued' language within literature, i.e. 'literary stylistics'. He goes on to say that in such examination the scope is sometimes narrowed to concentrate on the more striking features of

literary language A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken langua ...

, for instance, its 'deviant' and abnormal features, rather than the broader structures that are found in whole texts or discourses. For example, the compact language of poetry is more likely to reveal the secrets of its construction to the stylistician than is the language of plays and novels (Crystal. 1987, 71).

Poetry

As well as conventional styles of language there are the unconventional – the most obvious of which is

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

. In ''Practical Stylistics'', HG Widdowson examines the traditional form of the

epitaph An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...

, as found on headstones in a cemetery. For example:
:His memory is dear today :As in the hour he passed away. :(Ernest C. Draper 'Ern'. Died 4.1.38) :(Widdowson. 1992, 6) Widdowson makes the point that such sentiments are usually not very interesting and suggests that they may even be dismissed as 'crude verbal carvings' and crude verbal disturbance (Widdowson, 3). Nevertheless, Widdowson recognises that they are a very real attempt to convey feelings of human loss and preserve affectionate recollections of a beloved friend or family member. However, what may be seen as poetic in this language is not so much in the formulaic

phraseology In linguistics, phraseology is the study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as ''phrasemes''), in which the component parts of the expression tak ...

but in where it appears. The verse may be given undue reverence precisely because of the sombre situation in which it is placed. Widdowson suggests that, unlike words set in stone in a graveyard, poetry is unorthodox language that vibrates with inter-textual implications (Widdowson. 1992, 4). Two problems with a stylistic analysis of poetry are noted by PM Wetherill in ''Literary Text: An Examination of Critical Methods''. The first is that there may be an over-preoccupation with one particular feature that may well minimise the significance of others that are equally important (Wetherill. 1974, 133). The second is that any attempt to see a text as simply a collection of stylistic elements will tend to ignore other ways whereby meaning is produced (Wetherill. 1974, 133).

Implicature

In ' Poetic Effects' from ''Literary Pragmatics'', the

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

Adrian Pilkington analyses the idea of '

implicature In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...

', as instigated in the previous work of

Dan Sperber Dan Sperber (born 20 June 1942 in Cagnes-sur-Mer) is a French social and cognitive scientist and philosopher. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology, linguistic pragmatics, psychology of reasoning, and phil ...

and Deirdre Wilson. Implicature may be divided into two categories: 'strong' and 'weak' implicature, yet between the two extremes there are a variety of other alternatives. The strongest implicature is what is emphatically implied by the speaker or writer, while weaker implicatures are the wider possibilities of meaning that the hearer or reader may conclude. Pilkington's ' poetic effects', as he terms the concept, are those that achieve most relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures and not those meanings that are simply 'read in' by the hearer or reader. Yet the distinguishing instant at which weak implicatures and the hearer or reader's conjecture of meaning diverge remains highly subjective. As Pilkington says: 'there is no clear cut-off point between assumptions which the speaker certainly endorses and assumptions derived purely on the hearer's responsibility.' (Pilkington. 1991, 53) In addition, the stylistic qualities of poetry can be seen as an accompaniment to Pilkington's poetic effects in understanding a poem's meaning.

Tense

Widdowson points out that in

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...

's poem "

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere'') is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of ''Lyrical Ballad ...

" (1798), the mystery of the Mariner's abrupt appearance is sustained by an idiosyncratic use of tense. (Widdowson. 1992, 40) For instance, the Mariner 'holds' the wedding-guest with his 'skinny hand' in the

present tense The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...

, but releases it in the

past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some ha ...

('...his hands dropt he.'); only to hold him again, this time with his 'glittering eye', in the present (Widdowson. 1992, 41).

The point of poetry

Widdowson notices that when the content of poetry is summarised, it often refers to very general and unimpressive observations, such as 'nature is beautiful; love is great; life is lonely; time passes', and so on (Widdowson. 1992, 9). But to say:
:Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, :So do our minutes hasten to their end ... :William Shakespeare, '60'. Or, indeed:
:Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, :Nor hours, days months, which are the rags of time ... : John Donne, '

The Sun Rising The Sun Rising may refer to: * ''The Sun Rising'' (poem), a poem by John Donne published in 1633 * "The Sun Rising" (song), a 1989 single by The Beloved See also * Sunrise (disambiguation) {{DEFAULTSORT:Sun Rising, The ...

', ''Poems'' (1633) This language gives the reader a new perspective on familiar themes and allows us to look at them without the personal or social conditioning that we unconsciously associate with them (Widdowson. 1992, 9). So, although the reader may still use the same exhausted words and vague terms like 'love', 'heart' and 'soul' to refer to human experience, to place these words in a new and refreshing context allows the poet the ability to represent humanity and communicate honestly. This, in part, is stylistics, and this, according to Widdowson, is the point of poetry (Widdowson. 1992, 76).

Notes

References and related reading

. 1998. ''Language Play'' (London: Penguin) *ed. David Birch. 1995. ''Context and Language: A Functional Linguistic Theory of Register'' (London, New York: Pinter) *Michael Burke. 2010. ''Literary Reading, Cognition and Emotion: An Exploration of the Oceanic Mind'' (London and New York: Routledge) *Richard Bradford. 1985. ''A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics'', 2nd edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) *Richard Bradford. 1997. ''Stylistics'' (London and New York: Routledge) *Richard Bradford. 1997. ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language'', 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) * Roger Fowler. 1996. ''Linguistic Criticism'', 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press) *William Downes. 1995. ''The Language of George Orwell'' (London: Macmillan Press) *William Downes. 1998. ''Language and Society'', 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) *A McIntosh and P Simpson. 1964. ''The Linguistic Science and Language Teaching'' (London: Longman) *Adrian Pilkington. 1991. 'Poetic Effects', ''Literary Pragmatics'', ed. Roger Sell (London: Routledge) *Brian Lamont. 2005. ''First Impressions'' (Edinburgh: Penbury Press) *ed. Jean Jacques Weber. 1996. ''The Stylistics Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present'' (London: Arnold Hodder) *ed. Thomas A. Sebeok. 1960. ''Style in Language'' (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) * Geoffrey Leech and Michael H. Short. 1981. ''Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose'' (London: Longman) * George Orwell. 1949. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (London: Heinemann) * H. G. Widdowson. 1992. ''Practical Stylistics'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press) * * Katie Wales. 2001. ''A Dictionary of Stylistics'', 2nd edition, (Harlow: Longman) *

MAK Halliday Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; 13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018) was a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descrip ...

. 1964. ''Inside the Whale and Other Essays'' (London: Penguin Books) *

. 1978. ''Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning'' (London: Edward Arnold) *Michael Toolan. 1998. ''Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics'' (London: Hodder Arnold) *PM Wetherill. 1974. ''Literary Text: An Examination of Critical Methods'' (Oxford: Basil Blackwell)

External links

A CC licensed introductory course to Stylistics from Lancaster UniversityChecklist of American and British programs in stylistics and literary linguistics

Stylistics – Theoretical issues of stylisticsStylistics from Scratch: My 'Take' on Stylistics and How to Go About a Stylistic Analysis
Professor Mick Short
The ''Poetics and Linguistics Association''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stylistics (Literature) Stylistics Applied linguistics Literature