BSEE 110 – STYLISTICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

GENERAL CONCEPTS ON STYLE AND STYLISTICS

STYLE - Latin word “stilus” meaning a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other
used by Romans for writing on wax tablets
1. the teaching of how to write a composition;
2. the correspondence between thought and expression; and
3. the individual manner of making use of language
STYLE
“Style is the man himself” - Buffon
“Style is depth” - Darbyshire
“Style is deviations”- Enkvist

STYLISTICS
⮚ French word “stylistique” meaning instrument of writing.
⮚ Greek word “stylos” means a pen.

Archibald Hill
“Style is the structures, sequences and patterns that extend or may extend beyond the
boundaries of individual sentences; and stylistics is the study of them.”

IMPORTANCE OF STYLE
1. It is a correspondence between thought and expression
TWO FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
a. it is a means of communication
b. it is a means of shaping one’s thoughts

2. It is an embellishment of language
3. It is a technique of expression
- the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to the interest of the
reader
4. It signifies a literary genre

STYLES WITHIN THE ENGLISH LITERARY LANGUAGE

⮚ the belles-lettres style
 ⮚ the publicistic style
⮚ the newspaper styles
⮚ the scientific prose styles
⮚ the style of official documents

FIELDS OF INVESTIGATION

1. the aesthetic function of language

2. expressive means in a language
3. synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea
4. emotional coloring of the language
5. a system of special devices called stylistic devices
6. the splitting of the literary language into separate subsystems called stylistic devices
7. the interrelation between language and thought
8. the individual manner of an author in making use of the language

STYLISITICS AND ITS SUBDIVISIONS

a. studies the totality of special linguistic means which secure the desirable effect of its
utterance

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

1. LINGUO-STYLISTICS
- the study of literary discourse from a linguistic orientation
- is concerned with the language codes and particular messages to exemplify how
the codes are constructed

2. LITERARY STYLISTICS
- focuses on explicating the message to interpret and evaluate literary writings as
the work of art

3. STYLISTICS OF DECODING
- can be presented in the following way:
sender – message – receiver speaker – book – reader
History of Stylistics
✔ Ancient Times
✔ Middle Ages
✔ The New Age
✔ The 20th Century

Ancient Greece
Languages > Speeches

Practical Function of Language

⮚ Political and Judicial Speeches

Aesthetic Function of Language

⮚ Ceremonial Speeches

The language was used:

⮚ Rhetoric
⮚ Poetic
⮚ Dialectic
Stylistics is a part of Linguistic
⮚ Rhetoric
⮚ Poetic
⮚ Dialectic
⮚ The different manner of expressing thoughts and emotions

Ancient Times (Rome)

- Caesar (Analogist)
- Cicero (Anomalist)
Caesar and the Analogist Cicero and the Anomalist

▪ Stressed regularity and system rules ▪ Aim at the creation and

▪ Focus on facts and data development of ‘Ornate Dicere’ that
▪ Their aim is to create simple, clear, is flowery language
and straightforward speeches ▪ Used unnatural syntactic patterns,
 ▪ Other representatives were Seneca
and Tacitus
artificial sentence structures
▪ Created anomalies on all language
levels
▪ Due to their approach, where the
true message and communicated
content, were secondary to the form
of presentation, Rhetoric was called
the “Mother of Lies”
▪ Cicero built his theory of rhetoric, on
the distinction between three styles;
high, middle, low

Middle Ages
- Cicero’ s Anomalist was a model
- There is no progress in the development of stylistics
New Age (new Theories of Style)
⮚ Individualist
⮚ Emotionalist
⮚ Formalist
⮚ Functionalist

Era of Romanticism
- The notion and term “style” referred to the written form of language.
- Spoken language was the main subject of rhetoric.
Reference:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ePD2Sa-9se15Mjf7tBw-sIna-MGu47Si/view?
usp=drive_web&authuser=0

AN OVERVIEW ON STYLISTICS

NORM STYLE - an assemblage of stable means objectively existing in the language and
systematically used. (Stylistics and Discourse Analysis 6)

NORM - Is an invariant, which should embrace all phonemic, morphological, lexical,

and syntactic patterns with their typical properties circulating in the language at a definite
period of time. (Stylistics and Discourse Analysis 7)
INDIVIDUAL STYLE - a unique combination of language units peculiar to a given writer
which makes his work easily recognizable. (Stylistics and Discourse Analysis 8)

FUNCTIONAL STYLE - are the subsystems of language, each subsystem having its own
peculiar features in what concern vocabulary means, syntactical constructions, and even
phonetics. (Stylistics and Discourse Analysis 9)

DENOTATIVE VS. CONNOTATIVE Annual revenue growth

DENOTATION - concerned with the essence of the utterance. (Stylistics and Discourse Analysis 11)
DENOTATIVE INFORMATION - the contential nucleus of a language unit which: 1)
names the subject matter of communication; 2) is not predetermined by the communication
act; 3) directly or indirectly refers to the object or notion of reality. (Stylistics and Discourse Analysis
12)

CONNOTATION - dealing with or reflecting the attitude of the interlocutors to what is being
said and to the conditions of communication. (Stylistics and Discourse Analysis 13)
CONNOTATIVE INFORMATION - is the contential periphery of a language unit which:
1) depends upon different aspects of the communication act (time, participants, etc). 2)
expresses the speaker's attitude to the Subject matter of communication, to the listener, or
to the social status of the interlocutors. (Stylistics and Discourse Analysis 14)

LEXICAL VS. STYLISTIC MEANING

LEXICAL MEANING - the meaning of a word in relation to the physical world or to

abstract concepts, without reference to any sentence in which the word may occur.
STYLISTIC MEANING - Leech (1974:20) states that stylistic meaning is that which a piece
of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use.

LINGUISTIC VS. EXTRALINGUISTIC

LINGUISTIC CONTEXT - A linguistic context is the encirclement of a language unit by

other language units in speech. Such encirclement makes the meaning of the unit clear and
unambiguous. It is especially important in the case with polysemantic words (word or phrase
with multiple meanings).

MICRO CONTEXT
 - is the context of a single utterance (sentence). It is the linguistic (Grammatical,
phonological, lexical, syntactic, etc.) environment of a text.
MACRO CONTEXT
- is the context of a paragraph in a text. It is the sociolinguistic (the social ranks of
the interlocutors, the epoch in which the interaction occurs of the text is written,
etc.) environment of a text.
MEGACONTEXT
- is the context of a book chapter, a story, or the whole book.

EXPRESSIVE MEANS, STYLISTIC DEVICES, AND FUNCTIONAL

EXPRESSIVE MEANS - is a marked member of stylistic opposition which has an

invariant (unchanged) meaning in language
STYLISTIC DEVICES - an intentional change of fixed distribution of language unit in speech.
FUNCTIONAL DEVICES - deals with the connections between what Leech (2008) calls
‘language and what is not language.’ This is concerned with the semantic function of the
formal properties of the language system, that is, its proposition meaning.

EXPRESSIVENESS VS. EMOTIVENESS

EXPRESSIVENESS - a kind of intensification of an utterance or a part of it.

EXPRESSIVE MEANS - phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and
syntactical forms that exist in language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and/or
emotional intensification of the utterance. All these forms have neutral synonyms.

PHONETIC EXPRESSIVE MEANS - phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical,

phraseological, and syntactical forms that exist in language-as-a-system for the purpose of
logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance. All these forms have neutral
synonyms.
EXPRESSIVE MEANS
- Word-building expressive means: suffixes and productive patterns of word
formation.
- Lexical expressive means: words, which obtain inherent expressiveness,
perceived without any context. There are words with emotive meaning only,
 words that have both referential and emotive meaning, slang, vulgar, poetic, and
archaic words, set phrases, and phraseological units
- Morphological expressive means: grammatical forms (tenses, pronouns, articles,
modal verbs) which obtain inherent expressiveness perceived without any
context. Syntactical expressive means: constructions, which reveal a certain
degree of logical and emotional emphasis.
EMOTIVENESS - the emotions of writer or speaker. it has reference to the feelings and
emotions of a speaker towards the thing.
Reference
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16OZ14fFsTASEpBDVx2gnWe0QROkXFNyC/view?
usp=drive_web&authuser=0

HISTORY OF STYLISTICS
⮚ ANCIENT TIME

⮚ GREECE

BRIEF HISTORY

⮚ 1st CENTURY- ARISTIOTLE, CICERO, QUINTELIAN OF ROME

⮚ CLASSICAL RHETORIC ENTAILED 2 STAGES
- ARRANGEMENT
- VERBAL EXPRESSION

ARRANGEMENT
- It involves the organization of speech:
1. Introduction
2. Exposition
3. Elaboration
4. Conclusion

Verbal Expression
- It involves the organization of speech:
⮚ Choice of Words
⮚ Order of the words (syntax)
⮚ Collocation of the words based on their meanings
⮚ Figures of Speech
⮚ Rhetorical Devices

INVENTIONS
⮚ INVENTION
⮚ ARRANGEMENT
⮚ STYLE
⮚ MEMORY
⮚ DELIVERY

INVENTIONS
 - It is the process of coming up with material for a text. (Pre-writing stage)

Examples:
- A political candidate comes up with several major points she wants to bring up in
a debate.
- Before writing a paper, a student does a freewriting exercise to come up with a
good topic.
ARRANGEMENTS
- It is the process of deciding how to order the material in a text.

Ex.
- A political candidate decides that she will first talk about civil rights; next, she will
talk about the economy; finally, she will talk about international relations.
- Before writing a paper, a student creates an outline to determine the order in
which he will discuss his major points.

STYLE
- is the process of coming up with the actual words that will be used in a text.
Ex.
- A student revises sentences he wrote in the passive voice into sentences in the
active voice.
- A defense attorney comes up with a witty line: “If the shoe doesn’t match, you
must detach.”

MEMORY
- is the process of committing a text to memory.

Ex.
- A student memorizes his paper (or at least the major points of it) so that he can
deliver it at an academic conference without reading off the paper itself.
- A student memorizes his paper (or at least the major points of it) so that he can
deliver it at an academic conference without reading off the paper itself.

DELIVERY
- It is the process of presenting a text to an audience.

Ex.
- At an academic conference, a student walks around the room as he delivers his
paper instead of standing behind the podium the whole time.

17th and 18th century

17th and 18th Century

⮚ Rhetorical Devices became part of the style.

⮚ By the 19th century, prose that made use of rhetorical devices of arrangement and
verbal expression was known as ELEGANT.

Russian formalism
Roman Jakobson
 - He opposed the interpretations of literature based on intuitions and
impressionism.
- He focuses on the defining qualities of poetic language.
- The poetic function of language is based on COMMUNICATIVE ACTS.
- [Formalism] stresses the analysis of the literary work as a self-sufficient verbal
entity, constituted by internal relations and independent of reference either to the
state of mind of the author or to the "external" world.
- M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (1999)

General Concepts on Russian Formalism

⮚ Autotelic
⮚ Defamiliarization
⮚ Foregrounding
⮚ Plot/Story
⮚ Literariness

Characteristics of Russian Formalism

⮚ Emphasis on form over from subject matter.

⮚ The goal of formalism was to create a scientific way of reading and interpreting
literature based on linguistic components and literary techniques.

⮚ Formalism outlined a distinction between literary language and the language of

everyday interaction.

⮚ Similarly, formalists attempted to establish that literature is detached from material

history and social context.

⮚ The formalists believed it was equally or more important to focus on the structural
components of a work of literature.

⮚ The formalist literary theorists placed importance on how language operates within a
text irrespective of authorship and content.

Example of a Literary Piece - The Overcoat by: Gogol

Structuralism
Structuralism - Structuralists believe that the underlying structures which
organise rules and units into meaningful systems are generated by
the human mind itself and not by sense perception.

Aristotle
- He identified simple structures as forming the basis of life. A structure can be
defined as any conceptual system that has three properties: “wholeness” (the
system should function as a whole), “transformation” (the system should not be
static), and “self-regulation (the basic structure should not be changed).

Ferdinand De Saussure
- language is not a naming process by which things get associated with a word or
name. The linguistic sign is made of the union of “signifier” (sound image, or
“psychological imprint of sound”) and “signified” (concept).
 New criticism
New Criticism
- It emphasizes explication, or "close reading," of "the work itself." It rejects old
historicism's attention to biographical and sociological matters.
- New Critics insist that the meaning of a text is intrinsic and should not be
confused with the author's intentions nor the work's affective dimension

REFERENCE

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11R24dp3LOIhaLZW6K6vfsgPckf6jcmBl/view?
usp=drive_web&authuser=0