University of Education Lahore Department of English Course Title: STYLUSTICS Programme: BS ENGLISH (SEMESTER 8) Course Code: ENGL4138 Instructor Name: ABDUL QAYYUMWhat is Stylistics? ®. * Stylistics is the science which explores how readers interact with the language of (mainly literary) texts in order to explain how we understand, and are affected by texts when we read them. * Stylistics examines oral and written texts in order to determine crucial characteristic linguistic properties, structures and patterns influencing perception of the texts.Stylistics as a Branch of Linguistics ®. * Stylistics examines oral and written texts in order to determine crucial characteristic linguistic properties, structures and patterns influencing perception of the texts. Thus, it can be said that this branch of linguistics is related to discourse analysis, in particular critical discourse analysis, and pragmatics. * Owing to the fact that at the beginning of the development of this study the major part of the stylistic investigation was concerned with the analysis of literary texts it is sometimes called literary linguistics or literary stylistics.Stylistic Approach * Stylistics is a linguistic approach to literature, explaining the relation between language and artistic function, with motivating questions such as “why” and “how” more than “what”. * Stylistics is an intensive study of literary text on an advanced level, by making out the particular effect of the particular choice of language in literary communication.Why is Practical Stylistics So important? ®. * It can provide the means whereby the student of literature can relate a piece literature to his own experience of language and so can extend that experience. *It can assist in the transfer of interpretative skills, on essential purpose of literary education. * It can provide a procedure for demystifying literary texts. * The focus of a literary text in itself provides a context in which the learning of aspects of language can be positively enjoyed.Principles of a Linguistic Approach to ®. Literary Study and Criticism (Carter) * That the greater our detailed knowledge of the working of the language system, the greater our capacity for insightful awareness of the effects produced by the literary texts * That a principled analysis of language can be used to make our commentary on the effects produced in a literary work less impressionistic and subjectiveThat because it will be rooted in a systematic awareness of language, bits of language will not be merely spotted and evidence gathered casually and haphazardly. Analysis of one linguistic pattern requires checking against related patterns across the text. Evidence for the text will be provided in an overt or principled way. The conclusions can be attested and retrieved by another analyst working on the same data with the same method. There is also less danger that we may ok textual features crucial to the significance of the work.Types of Stylistics Comparative stylistics * It is connected with the contrastive study of more than one language. It analyses the stylistic resources not inherent in a separate language but at the crossroads of two languages, or two literatures and is obviously linked to the theory of translation®. Textualist Stylistics It deals with the linguistic patterns of literary texts. This approach was popular at the early stages of the evolution of stylistics as a discipline where linguists viewed literary texts merely as linguistic events and felt literary interpretation, involving thematic concerns or artistic significance, were not of concern to them as linguists, especially as they involved an understanding of the artist’s intention which was hardly subject to the objective verifiability emphasized by the scientific claim of modern linguisticsInterpretative Stylistics * This is the practice engaged in by most stylisticians nowadays. It involves the analysis of the linguistic data in a (literary) text, the unravelling of the content or artistic value of the text. The belief is that the linguistic patterns are chosen deliberately to express certain artistic or literary goals and that the two can hardly be divorced. * Decoding stylistics A comparatively new branch of stylistics is the decoding stylistics, which can be traced back to the works of Jackobson and other scholars of the Prague linguistic circle.