Introduction into stylistics

Stylistic 1

Introduction into stylistics

 

General notes on style and stylistics

The subject of stylistics hasn't so far been definitely outlined. This is due to a number of reasons. First of all there is a confusion between the terms style and stylistics. The first term is so broad that it is hardly possible to regard it as a term. We speak of style in architecture, literature, behaviour, linguistics, dress and other fields of human activity. Even in linguistics the word style is used so widely that it needs interpretation. The majority of linguists who deal with the subject of style agree that the term applies to the following fields of investigation:

1. the esthetic function of the language,

2. expressive means in the language,

3. synonymous ways of rendering,

4. an emotional colouring of the language,

5. a system of special devices called stylistic devises,

6. the splitting of the literary language into separate subsystems called stylistic devises,

7. the interelation between language and thought,

8. the individual manner of an author in making use of language.

 

The origin of style and stylistics

There is a widely held view that style is the correspondence between thought and expression. The thought is based on the assumption that of the 2 functions of language:

the 1 is communicative,

the 2 is expressive.

The later finds it proper materialisation in strength of sentences, especially arranged to convey the ideas and also to get the desired response. Many great minds have made valuable observations onto the relations between thought and expression. The main trend in most of these observations may be summarised as follows. The linguistic form of the idea expressed always reflects the peculiarities of the thought and vice versa.

The character of the thought will always in a greater or lesser degree manifest itself in the language forms chosen for the expression of the idea. 

Another commonly accepted connotation of the term style is embellishment of the language. This concept is popular and is held in some of the scientific papers on literary criticism.

Language and style are regarded as separate bodies. Language can easily dispense with the style. Moreover, style as an embellishment of language is viewed as smth that hinders understanding. In it's extreme style can dress the thought in such fancy attire that one can hardly get at the idea hidden behind elaborate design of tricky stylistic devises.

Very popular notion among practical linguists teachers if language is that style is a technic of expression. In this sense style is generally defined as the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to the interests of the reader.

The term style also signifies a literary genre. Thus we speak of a classical style, realistic style, the style of romanticism and so on. On the other hand, the term is widely used in literature. Being applied to the various kinds of literary word such as poem, story etc.

There is one more important application of the term style. In this case we speak of the different styles of the language. A style of language is a system of interelated language means which serves a definite aim of communication. Thus we may distinguish the following styles within the English literary style:

1. the fiction style (belles-lettres style)

2. the publicistic style (social and political journalism/or journalistic style)

3. the scientific prose style

4. the newspaper style,

5. the style of official documents.

 

Stylistic and its subdivisions

According to Galperin stylistics it is a branch of general linguistics which deals with the following two interdependent tasks:

1. it studies the tautology of special linguistic means (stylistic devices (SD) as expressive means) which serve the desirable effect of the utterance,

2. it studies certain types of texts discourse which due to the choice and arrangement of the language are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication (functional styles).

At this point they should be drawn a border line between literary and linguistic stylistics. They have a number of integrating and differentiating.

First and famous they have common object of investigation, which unite this 2 stylistics. Namely

1. a literary language from the point of view of its versions and the boundary of this versions,
2. the peculiarities of some individual style as a system with its own distinctive features,
3. the language of poetry as a special form of communication with its own peculiarities and with its own sphere of functioning.

On the other hand, there are some different object of investigation which ?democate? them. They are firstly for linguistic stylistics:

Firstly,

a) styles of literary language. Their development, establishment and distinctions,

b) the linguistic nature of stylistic devices, their system and functioning,

c) 2 variants of the language (the spoken and written, the colloquial, the bookish and their intorelation in the language and speech.

And secondly for literary stylistic:

the outlook of the author and his creative method and peculiarities of his individual style. So linguistic and literary stylistic have the same subdivisions. As ling they are 1 lexical stylistics it studies stylistic functions of the vocabulary and consider its direct and figurative meanings.

Functional stylistics is a part of ling stylistic which deals with functional styles i.e. it deals with system of means of expressions depending on different spheres and conditions of communication.

Grammatical stylistics is divided into

1 morphological

2 syntactical

Morphological stylistic considers stylistic possibilities within the framework of different grammatical categories peculiar of these or those parts of speech.

Syntactical stylistic investigates expressive possibilities of word order and types of syntactical ties.

Phonological stylistics studies the peculiarities of the phonetic organization of speech.

The subject of stylistics can be outlined as the study of the nature functions and structure of stylistic devices on the one hand, and on the other hand, the study of each style of the language as classified above i.e. its aim, its structure, its characteristic features and the effect it produces as well as its intorelation with other styles of the language.

 

Expressive means and SD

In linguistics there are different terms to denote those particular means by which a writer obtains his effect. Expressive means, stylistic means, SD and other terms are all used in discriminately but it is necessary to make a distinction between expressive means and SD.

All stylistic means of the language can be divided into which are used in some specific way and special devices called SD.

The expressive means of the language are those phonetics means, morphological forms, means of word- building and lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms all of which function in the language for emotional or logical intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms of the language have been fixed in grammars and dictionaries. Some of them are normalized and good dictionaries label them as intensifies. In most cases they have corresponding neutral synonymous forms. The most powerful expressive means of any language are phonetic pith, melody, stress, pausation, drawling, ?dralling out? certain syllables, whispering, a sing- song matters of speech and other ways of using the voice are more effective that any other means in intensifying the utterance emotionally or logically.

Among the morphol expr means the use of the present simple instead of the past simple can be mentioned here. This has already been acknowledged as a specific and its the historical. In describing some past events the author uses the present tense thus achieving a more vivid description of what was going on. At the lexical level there are a lot of words which due to their inner expressiveness constitute a special layer. There are words with emotive meaning only like interjections, qualitative adjectives, words belonging to special groups of literary English or non-standard Eng and some other groups. The same can be said of the proverbs and  set expressions. Proverbs and saying serve to make speech more __ mainly from the emotional point of view. The expressive means of the language are studied in manner of phonetics, grammar, lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics however observes not only the nature of expressive means but its potential capacity of becoming a stylistic device. As for SD devises it’s a conscious and intentional literary use of some of the facts of the language including expressive means in which the most essential feature both structural and semantic of the language forms a raised to a generalized form and there buy present a generative model. Most SD may be regarded as aiming at the further intensification in the corresponding expressive means.  The interrelation between exp men and SD can also be in terms of the theory and information. Expr means have a greater degree of predictability than SD. The letter may appear in an environment which may seem alien and therefore be only slightly or not at all predictable. Exp mea are commonly use in the language and therefore easily predictable. SD must be regarded as a special code which has still to be deciphered.

 

Stylistic 2

 

Stylistic differentiation of the English vocabulary

All the words comprising the vocab of a well-developed language may be divided into 3 groups

1 neutral,

2 literary and

3 colloquial.

The 1 is the largest. There belong words without additional information such as a book, speak, a man etc. Neutral words nearly signify corresponding phenomenon. Literary and colloquial words bear some additional information as to the quality and manner of the object. They may change the whole colory of a neutral utterance. The majority of lit and col words have synonyms in the neutral layer of the vocab. Child (neut), kid (col) infant (lit); father (neut), parent (lit); go away (neutral), retire (lit), get out (colloquial).

 

Literary words

LW can be divided into general lit w and a special lit w. The usage of general lit w is not limited by stylistic factors. Special lit w are limited both in meaning and usage. They are subdivided into terms, archaisms, neologisms and barbarisms.

Terms are used to denote different kinds of notions referring to science, technic and arts. They are deprived of emotional coloring and are usually mono semantic. The sphere of application as a rule is scientific prose or publicistic works. There they do not perform any stylistic function, but if they are used in fiction, they play a special stylistic role while reviling the profession of a character. Hangs the function of term is either to indicate the technical peculiarities of the subject dealt with or to make some reference to the occupation of a character whose language would naturally contains special words and expressions.

Archaisms

This group comprises obsolete words, historical words and archaic words. All of them have been completely ousted from the language by modern synonyms. Obsolete words are extremely rarely used and cannot be understood without special explanation. "Haply "means perhaps, "ought "means smth, to" delve "means to dig. Archaic word are now understood due to the fact that they were still used  in the 19s century and that in modern English there are other words of the same root. (Hither -here, thee/thou - you. )

Historical words

HW are such ones which designate objects and phenomena which have gone out of use carrying away their names with them.

Archer (лучник),

Baldric (перевязь для лука или для меча)

Words of this type never disappear from the language. They are historical words and remain us terms referring to definite stages in the development of the society and cannot therefore be dispensed with thou the things and phenomena to which they refer have long passed into oblivion. The function of HW is to create a special atmosphere of a certain epoch belonging to the past and to render people used to speak at that time.

Neologisms

N are words and expressions used to denote new phenomena, objects and processes. The intense development of science and technic, the appearance of new social structures and idea called forth many lexical words. Such words as capital investment, bank, manufacture were coined in connection with the industrial revolution in England. The First World War brought forth such new word as camouflage.. after the second world war: teach-in, hippy, quick deployment, forces.

In stylistic it’s necessary to distinguish lexical neologisms and stylistics neologisms. Stylistic neologisms are words and words- combinations coined by their creators for the sake of its expressive utterance to the productive word-building patterns: affixation, compound, shortenings.

Example: check-up, know-how, stands for skills/hospital

Stylistic neologisms are often individual ones. Their main function is to create a ?humosy ? fact or to achieve greater expressiveness of style.

Barbarisms and foreign loans.

Throughout the history of an English nation a plenty of words penetrated to the language. Some of them exist in the word stock of the language and are registered in dictionaries but have synonyms of native origin. They ere called barbarisms. The stylistic function of barbarisms is to add to atmosphere and to the character a peculiar foreign flavor. They serve to characterise the speech of characters of non-english nationality.

Ex: fiction style, belles-lettres.

Foreign words in contrast with barbarisms are not recorded in the word-stock of the language. They are nearly////

And intermixing.

Styl-c function is the same of that of barbarisms but they are felt as utterly alien to the l-ge of the utterance.

 

The colloquial layer of the language

This layer includes several groups slang, jargon, professional words, vulgarisms and dialectal words.

 

Slangily words

These are words that have originated in everyday speech and exist on the periphery of the lexical system of the language. They gradually penetrate into the upper layer of the language and come to be recorded as a literary norm.

To take stock in = I'm interested in, bread-basket = stomach, rot = nonsense etc.

Nowadays slang can be found in lots of modern books of fiction where the characters are given a pictorial description through their speech full of slangily words. Rather often the author himself resorts to slang a specially in half reported speech.

 

Jargonisms

Jargonisms can be grouped into 2 large subdivisions:

Social J and

Professional J.

SJ are words and word combinations used by particular social classes and groups to conceal the meaning. It is a sort of a secret code, made up either of ordinary words invested with a special meaning, or of distorted words.

- How long did they cook you?

- Since eight in the morning.

- Did you unbutton?

- They got a lot of dancing to do before they got anything out of me.

PJ are words and word combinations used by professional groups to give new vivid names to tools, machines and processes connected with an occupation.

Teen-fish = submarine, picture-show = a battle, block-buster = a bomb designed to destroy a block of buildings.

J are used in fiction mostly in dialogues to characterize a person through his speech and to create a realistic background.

 

Vulgarisms

V are rough and curse/ cause? words. They are always words with a strong emotive coloring which usually sound insulting to the ear.

Go to hell, damn, bloody etc.

V characterize the speech of the uncultured and the uneducated.

 

Dialectal words

DW a varieties of the universally acknowledge standard language. They are peculiar to some district and have no normalized form. In GB there are 5 main groups of northern, midland, eastern, western and southern.

Each of them in its turn contain some subgroups. English writers often retort to dialectal words in their books but they never write their books in dialect exclusively because the reader wouldn’t understand such books. They only insert DW and exp with a definite stylistic purpose. Either to characterize a personage through his speech or to create a variations local coloring.

 

3. Lexical expressive means and stylistic devises

Types of meaning

The building material of a literary work is a word which in different combinations creates the authors imaginative system. The word is a language sign that expresses s concept by its form and meaning. The form of a word shows its relation to the other words in a sentence. Concept is an abstract or general idea of some phenomenon of objective reality including the subjective feeling and emotions of human beings. The meaning of a word is the means by which the concept becomes materialised. Any word is ambiguous in the text of imaginative lit ad it occurs in 2 types of contexts advice. It occurs in a linguistic context i.e. in a certain sequence of words which conditions the realisation of its denotative meaning and it occurs in an esthetic context i.e. in a context of the literary work which conditions the realisation of its connotative meaning. So we can distinguish 3 main meanings in the word denotative, connotative and nominal.

Denotative meaning is the name of the whole of the concept, the naming of the given phenomenon or object through one of its qualities. Logical meaning is a historical category which changes in the course of time. As a result of this one word may denote different concepts acquiring primary and secondary meanings.

Land 1 solid part of the earth surface, 2 ground which is used for farming, 3 property in the form of land, 4 estate, 5 country and its people etc.

Connotative meaning expresses feelings and emotions, called forth by the phenomenon or object denoted by the word. The function of the CM is to show the subjective evaluative attitude of the speaker to the object spoken of. In some words the emotive meaning usually coexists with the logical one. Smart sweet etc. There are also words which are bear us of a strong emotive meaning. These are interjections, exclamatory words, oath, and colloquial intensifies

Ex: awful, terribly nice, frightfully well, ?aluss? which tend to lose their logical meaning in a definite context. Generally speaking the obvious plain of the literary word (its theme and its plot) is usually expressed in word denotations whole the implied plain (the authors attitude and message) is found in word connotations.

Nominal meaning characterises definite and singular things. These words are classified in grammar as proper nouns. Their function is not to single out one of the objects of the class for one particular occasion, but to make it the bearer of the properties which our mind have attached to. Thus nominal meaning is a derivative logical meaning. To distinguish nominal meaning from logical meaning the former is designated by a capital letter. Such words as Smith, Longfellow, Everest, Byron are set to have nominal meaning. the logical meaning from which they originate may in the course of time be forgotten and therefore not easily traced back. So most proper names have nominal meanings which may be regarded as homonyms of common nouns with their logical and emotive meanings in such words as Hope, Tailor, Black, Scotland etc. But sometimes we may observe a revers process a nominal meaning may assume a logical one.

Dunce- a stupid man, hooligan = name of the rowdy family etc. All the meanings of a word fixed by authoritative dictionaries form the semantic structure of the word. The word may acquire in the context a contextual logical (denotative) meaning, a contextual emotive (connotative), a contextual nominal meaning. The contextual meaning is closely connected with such a notion as transferors of meaning. Transferors of meaning is the interrelation between dictionary and contextual meaning. If this interrelation causes an alteration of the recognised logical meaning we may speak of a stylistic devise. The majority of lexical stylistic devises are based into interaction between different lexical meanings of the word.

Simile

Simile is a devise based on an analogy between 2 things which are discovered to possess some features in common. Otherwise being entirely dissimilar.

For ex: darkness when once it fell like a stone is based on the discovered similarity between darkness and stone the letter digesting, suggestion , quickness and danger of the fallen darkness.

The formal elements of a S are:

1 a pare of objects: darkness- stone, 2 a connective: like, as, such as.

Not only conjunctions but adverbs, but notional words (nouns, verbs, prepositional phrases). As well as suffixes (wise, like) can have the function in a connective of a S.

She seemed nothing more than a doll. S shouldn’t be confused with an ordinary comparison. S is based on the comparison of objects belonging to entirely different classes of things while belonging to the same class.

The boy seems to be as clever as his mother.

A great number of similies came to lose their expressiveness in the cost of long use. They’re widely used in everyday speech and called trite.

As bold as lion; as deaf as a post; as ugly as a sin; as white as a sheet.

Some of the trite similies are alliterated.

As cool as cucumber; as blind as a bat etc.

Metaphor

Definition of Metaphor

Metaphor is a figure of speech makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two things or objects that are poles apart from each other but have some characteristics common between them. In other words, a resemblance of two contradictory or different objects is made on a single or some common characteristics.

Explanation of Metaphor

In simple English, when you portray a person, place, thing, or an action as being something else, even though it is not actually that “something else,” you are speaking metaphorically. “He is a black sheep of the family” is a metaphor because he is not a sheep and is not even black. However, we can use this comparison to describe association of the black sheep with that person.  Black sheep is an unusual animal and typically stays away from the herd, and the person you are describing shares similar characteristics.

Furthermore, a metaphor develops a comparison which is different from a simile i.e. we do not use “like” or “as” to develop a comparison in a metaphor. It actually makes an implicit or hidden comparison and not an explicit one.

Common Speech Examples of Metaphors

Most of us think of a metaphor as a device used in songs or poems only, and that it has nothing to do with our everyday life. In fact, all of us in our routine life speak, write and think in metaphors. We cannot avoid them. Metaphors are sometimes constructed through our common language. They are called conventional metaphors. Calling a person a “night owl” or an “early bird” or saying “life is a journey” are examples of common conventional metaphors commonly heard and understood by most of us. Below are some more conventional metaphors we often hear in our daily life:

My brother was boiling mad. (This implies he was too angry.)

The assignment was a breeze. (This implies that the assignment was not difficult.)

It is going to be clear skies from now on. (This implies that clear skies are not a threat and life is going to be without hardships)

The skies of his future began to darken. (Darkness is a threat; therefore, this implies that the coming times are going to be hard for him.)

Her voice is music to his ears. (This implies that her voice makes him feel happy)

 

4. Epithet

The E is based on the interplay of emotive and logical meanings in an attributive word, phrase or even sentence used to characterise an object and pointing out to the reader some of the properties or features of the object with the aim of giving an individual perception and evaluation of these features or properties. According to Galperins clasification E can be divided into language epithets, speech E and Galperin also distinguishes several structural models of E.

 

LE are also called trite or fixed i.e. they are used in literature and speech in the form of clichés.