Stylistics and pragmatics

By-zahraa saleem
Stylistics is concerned with the choices that are available to a writer and
the reasons why particular forms and expressions are used rather than
others (Richards and Schmidt, 2012: 566)
Huang (2017:2) defines pragmatics as “the systematic study of meaning
by virtue of, or dependent on, the use of language. The central topics of
inquiry of pragmatics include implicature, presupposition, speech act,
deixis, and reference”.
• Pragmatic stylistic has emerged as a prominent stylistic approach
in the late 1980’s, when Stylisticians have started to realize the
importance of looking at “the linguistic features of texts which
arise from the real interpersonal relationships between author, text
and reader in real historical and sociocultural contexts” (Wales,
2011: 335-6).
• “Stylisticians noticed the correlation between core pragmatic
principles and foundational theories within stylistics such as
Mikhail Bakhtin’s sociological poetics and Roger Fowler’s
account of literature as social discourse” (Warner, 2014: 363).
• Moving closer towards pragmatics, stylistics became better suited
to provide a more adequate and contextually enriched
interpretation, not only description, of literary texts.
• This makes stylistics more tenable and easily defendable against
the criticisms often raised by literary critics, who often accuse
stylistic analysis of being uninformative linguistic description of
literary texts.
Pragmatic stylistics (or pragmastylistics, or even literary pragmatics)
deals with how certain features of the texts are used in context to express
particular aesthetic values and to create certain stylistic effects.

Pragmatic stylistics takes insights from the different theories and

conceptual frameworks developed in pragmatics to describe and
interpret literary (and non-literary) texts in context, from a stylistic point
of view.

Pragmatic stylistics takes on board the role of the context and that of
the reader in text interpretation. In this sense, the reader is perceived as
an active interpreter rather than a mere passive recipient (Black, 2006:
2).

Pragmatic stylistics is defined as a branch of stylistics that combines

approaches “to answer questions about how (literary) language is used in
context and how it contributes to the characterization of the protagonists
in a literary piece of art or how power structures are created and so on”
(Nørgaard, et al, 2010: 39).
Pragma-stylistic investigations have influenced general pragmatic
approaches, methods and theories on both a synchronic and a diachronic
dimension, too. Especially in historical pragmatic investigations, which
include a pragma-philological and a diachronic pragmatic analysis,
literary texts have been a source frequently drawn on, because there is
no spoken data available for historical periods, and play texts constitute
an important source to explore ‘the spoken’, although admittedly, this is
the ‘constructed’ spoken language(Nørgaard, et al, 2010: 39).
Other points of intersection between pragmatics and stylistics include
the focus on context and on the effects of the interactional strategies
used in context. Furthermore, pragmatic stylistics has stressed a
comprehensive holistic approach to conversational interaction and
includes the complex interplay between norms and deviations as well as
forms and meanings.
language(Nørgaard, et al, 2010: 39).
• Pragmatic stylistic approaches and multimodal stylistics have also
drawn attention to the need for including other semiotic modes in
order to account for the interplay between language and the visual,
etc. in films, for example (Busse, 2006b; McIntyre, 2008). More
recent approaches combine pragma-stylistic investigations with
corpus stylistic approaches and relate the identification of
linguistic patterns to interactive features. the pragma-stylistic focus
on language as exchange and the contextual features of language
also embraces the analysis of fictional narrative passages, e.g., the
relationship between narrative passages and discourse presentation
or a combination of pragma-stylistic and cognitive stylistic
considerations(Nørgaard, et al, 2010: 39).
• Major foci of the pragma-stylistic tool kit are on contextual
features of language use and on seeing conversation as exchange.
The notion of context may of course include various aspects: for
example, what Schiffrin (1987) has described as the physical,
personal and cognitive context, or what we would generally
understand as social, cultural, linguistic, authorial or editorial
contexts of production and reception (Nørgaard, et al, 2010: 39).
pragmatics, as Hickey (1881: 529) points out, coincides with stylistics in
that both are directly interested in speaker's choices from among a range
of grammatically acceptable linguistic forms. Yet, pragmatics looks at
choice as the means chosen to perform actions (request, inform, etc.),
whereas stylistics studies choice within particular interest in the
consequences on the linguistic level and the effects produced on the
hearer (aesthetic, affective, etc.)
Pragmastylistics is, thus, stylistics but with a pragmatic component
added to it (Hickey, 1881: 529). According to Davies, it is concerned
with showing the extent to which pragmatics contributes to the study of
literature; it looks at the usefulness of pragmatic theories to the
interpretation of literary texts.
pragmastylistics offers more complete explanations for many
unexplained phenomena than stylistics or pragmatics can do alone. It is a
branch of stylistics which applies ideas and concepts from linguistic
pragmatics to the analysis of literary texts and their interpretation.
• Huang (2012:19) defines Pragma-stylistics or pragmatic stylistics
by stating that it ''refers to the application of the findings and
methodologies of the theoretical pragmatics to the study of the
concept of style in language''.
• Stylistics has been proved to be a useful tool in the hands of an
analyst who wishes to analyze a text from any stand point. (Niazi
and Gautum ,2-10:12). This branch shows the purpose that relates
stylistics with pragmatics. That is to say the need for pragmatic
theories to the analysis of narrative texts.
Stylistics and pragmatics have been moving closer to one another in
recent years. The value of pragmastylistics is that it can keep clear the
differences between stylistic effects (elegance, formality, aesthetics etc.)
and pragmatic effects( what is being done and whether it is done
politely, effectively etc.) while allowing each area to enlighten the other.
Hickey (1881,p. 584)
Pragmatic Stylistics is an approach developed by Elizabeth Black, in her
book Pragmatic Stylistics(2006), to unravel the contribution of
pragmatics in the interpretation of the language of literary texts, with a
special focus on the fictional works of art .(Al-sheikh &Lazim,2017,
p.243).
• For example, lady Macbeth says:
• (1) What is done is done. What is done can't be undone (taken
from Cook, 2003).
• Here, we notice that the message can be achieved in a different
way where it denotes the same intended meaning. However,
presenting her speech in this stylistic way gives the meaning a
more effective force upon the hearing audience.
• Pragmatics and stylistics meet in the sense that the stylistic
choices and deviations from the norms correlate with pragmatic
theories (the cooperative principle, conversational implicature and
the politeness principle) where the speaker has to observe related
maxims throughout the process of communication. Consequently,
such stylistic choices and deviations are not arbitrary. For both
stylistics and pragmatics aim at persuasion. Du Marsais cited in
Bonta (2008: 227), adds that arguers' styles can be recognized
through "figures" ("ways of speaking different than the others by a
certain change .... that makes ... them ... more elevating or more
pleasant than the speech that expresses the same ideas but without
any significant change").

•
 • A. Pragmatic
• Pragmatic, communicative behaviour begins to be privileged.
Pragmatic-oriented stylisticians look at everyday conversation as a
means to understand literary discourse. According to Leech (1983),
it is the tendency to consider the text from an interactive point of
view.
• "At a more 'superficial' end of linguistics, illocutionary or
pragmatic theory leads us to study explicitly manipulative
constructions such as imperatives, interrogatives, responses, etc. At
a more abstract level, implicature, presupposition, and other
assumptions are highly promising for literary theory and analysis"
Fowler (1979, p. 15).
B. Radical
• It was Burton in 1982 who coined the term radical stylistics. The
distinctive element of this approach is the critics' search for the
ideological imprint of the text. Like pragmatic stylisticians,
ideologically-oriented analysts go beyond text level into the social
and historical forces which influence its production and reception.
There are mutual areas of knowledge shared by both pragmatic and
stylistics studies, of these significant areas of concern are the
metaphorical modes of meaning. Whether in literary non-literary texts,
metaphors are used as devices of communication by and through which
humans exchange their feelings and world views. the possible points of
connection with pragmatics pave the path to the emergence of a new
hybrid term Pragmatic Stylistics.(Al-sheikh &Lazim,2017, p.243)
Metaphor is viewed as a figure of style which is characterized by
“variation in the expression of meaning” Metaphor is “ a word used for
something resembling that which it usually refers to; for example, flood .
. . poured in , “ A flood of protests poured in the announcement in ] a
large quantity . . Camein. (Halliday, 1985: 319- 320).
Lakoff and Johnson are on the belief that metaphors are not merely
stylistic devices, nor they are part of highly evaluated examples of
literature; they are a crucial part of everyday communication.
Lakoff and Johnson proceed on the assumption that “most of our
ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature” (2003:4).

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