Introduction to Stylistics

Introduction to Stylistics A linguistic approach to literary understanding Zhang Huahong School of Foreign Studies

References Brown, Curtis: Philosophy of Language Talib, Ismail S.: Literary Stylistics Tinkler, John F.: History and Development of Prose Style 徐有志. 2005. 《英语文体学教程》.高等教育出版社. Crystal, D. 1979. Investigating English Style. London: Longman. Leech, G.N. 2003. Style in Fiction. New York: Longman. Leech, G.N. 1969. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London: Longman. Halliday, M.A.K.1964. Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies. Peer, W.V. Stylistics and Psychology Eagleton, T. 2004. Literary Theory. London: Blackwell. Thornborrow, J. & Wareing, S. 2000. Patterns in Language. London: Routledge. Widdowson, H.G.1975. Stylistics and the Teaching of literature. London: Longman. Wright, L. & Hope, J. 2000. Stylistics: A Practical Coursebook. London: Routledge.

Preliminary Considerations • The significance of the study • The suggested way of study • Means of course evaluation • Teaching and learning focus

The significance of the course • 1.Arts as means of human expression • 2.Literature as a mirror of society • 3.Language as a mirror of thought • 4.Language as a carrier of culture • 5.Style as a means of expressing • thoughts and feelings of the author

Suggested Format of Course Paper I. Abstract II. Key words III. Body 1. Brief account of the author 2. Brief account of the essay 3. Major theme of the essay 4. Linguistic presentation of the theme a. Lexical features b. Syntactic features c. Phonological features d. Semantic features/figures of speech 5. Conclusion IV. Reference

Format of Reference • 主要参考文献条目排列顺序如下： • [序号]作者.文献题名[文献类型标识]*.(出版地:) • 出版者，出版年.起始页码.例： • Reference: • [1]Levinson, S. Pragmatics [M]. Cambridge: • Cambridge University Press, 1983. 15-20. • [2]方永德.美国英语中的种族贬语[J].外国语， • 1995(1):68-72. • *参考文献类型标识： • [N]报纸文章；[J]期刊文章； [M]专著； • [D]学位论文；[C]论文集；

1.What is stylistics? • D. Crystal: Linguistics is the academic discipline that studies language scientifically, and stylistics, as a part of this discipline, studies certain aspects of language variation. Investigating English Style

2)G. N. Leech: 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”. • Style in Fiction • A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry

3)W. V. Peer: Stylistics is developed from Russian Formalism via Prague Structuralism, following the concept of “estrangement”- “deviation from normal usages”. • Stylistics and Psychology

4)Halliday: Linguistics is not and will never be the whole of literary analysis, and only the literary analyst—not the linguist—can determine the place of linguistics in literary studies. But if a text is to be described at all, then it should be described properly, by the theories and methods developed in linguistics, whose task is precisely to show how language works. • Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies

5)H. G. Widdowson: Stylistics involves both literary criticism and linguistics, as its morphological making suggests: the “style” component relating it to the former and the “istics” component to the latter. Stylistics is a means of relating disciplines and subjects, as shown in the following diagram: Disciplines: linguistics literary criticism ↖ ↗ Stylistics Subjects: ↙ ↘ (English) language (English) literature Style and the Teaching of literature

6)H. H. Zhang: 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……………………………. 2. What is style? According to Thomas S. Kane in Writing Prose: Style is a pattern of linguistic features distinguishing one piece of writing from another, or one category of writings from another. Therefore,

1)Style includes the writer’s way of thinking about his subject and his characteristic way of presenting it for a particular reader and purpose. • 2)Style results from linguistic choices, which effectively express the writer’s unique thought and feeling. • 3)Style is a means of discovery for both writer and reader.

4)Style sharpens expressive meaning as well as referential meaning, intensifying the tone of writing, making prose more persuasive. • 5)Style is not mere ornament; rather it conveys important subtleties of meaning and evaluation, which define the nature of the writer, his basic attitudes, his presuppositions, his moral stance, and his relation to his subject and his reader.

According to David Crystal in Investigating English Style: • There are four commonly occurring senses of the term STYLE: • 1)the language habits of one person: Shakespeare, James Joyce, Hemingway UNIQUENESS. • 2) the language habits shared by a group at one time: the Augustan poets, the Old English ‘heroic’ poetry.

3) say the right thing in the most effective way—good manners: ‘clear’ or ‘refined’ style. • 4) evaluation and description of literature in literary criticism or appreciation: ‘good’‘effective’ beautiful’ writing. • According to G. N. Leech in Style in Fiction, • there are some controversial views of style: • 1).Dualism: between form and meaning “style as choices of Manner rather than Matter, of Expression rather than Content”; as a “way of writing” or a “mode of expression” originates from Aristotle’s literary theory.

Style as the “dress of thought”, claimed by Renaissance and rationalism, makes it some kind of “adornment” of thought or meaning. The Aesthetics of form (parallelism, alliteration…) tends to attract the reader’s attention more than the meaning does, as seen in poetic lines. • Style as “manner of expression”, as Richard Ohman put it, “A style is a way of writing” in which “the words on the page might have been different, or differently arranged, without a corresponding difference in substance.

2).Monism: “It is like body and soul: form and content to me are one” (Flaubert Dec. 12,1857) originates from Plato’s literary theory. • As argued by David Lodge, in Language of Fiction (1966), it is impossible • to paraphrase literary writing; • to translate a literary work; • to divorce the general appreciation of a literary work from the appreciation of its style, for the inevitable loss of the hidden, metaphorical meaning.

3).Pluralism: analyzing style in terms of functions, characterized by Halliday’s three major functions of “ideational”, “interpersonal” and “textual”………………………………….... • 3.What is the main purpose of stylistics? • 1)to analyze language habits----to identify, from the general mass, those features restricted to certain kinds of social context • 2)to explain why such features have been used as opposed to others

3)to classify these features into categories based upon a view of their function in the social context • By ‘features’ we mean particular choice of words, sequence of words, or way of utterance, so-called stylistically distinctive features • 4.How is stylistics related to psychology? • Writing is an imitation of human thought • 1)the function of punctuation --- segmentation ---room for feedback

↗ • (6a) Next WEEK I’m starting a job in • ↘ • LONDON. • ↗↘ • (6b) Next WEEK I’m starting a JOB in • ↘ • LONDON.

↗ • (7a) Next MONDAY I’m spending the day • ↘ • in LONDON. • ↗ • (7b) Next MONDAY I’m spending the • ↘ ↘ • DAY in LONDON.

The organization of written language into graphic units is rather similar. The contrast between (6a) and (6b) can be captured in writing by the use of an extra punctuation mark: (8a) Next week, I’m starting a job in London. (8b)Nextweek, I’m starting a job—in London. But because graphic units tend to be longer than tone units, (8b) seems unusually emphatic, and perhaps the normal written rendering would have no internal punctuation at all: .

(8c)Next week, I’m starting a job in London. However, the same general principles of segmentation apply to both speech and writing. Note the absurdity of (9):Next Monday, I’m spending the day—in London. 2)the significance of sentence length ---force/weight 3)periodic structure ---producing tension and suspense

(1)Thetruth is that they have suffered through negligence. (2)Thatthey have suffered through negligence is the truth. (3)Sophiasailed into the room with her eyes ablaze. (4)With her eyes ablaze, Sophia sailed into the room. Parenthetical dependent constituents belong to the anticipatory category: (5)Sophia, with her eyes ablaze, sailed into the room.

4)loose structure---producing relaxation and comfort (1)This morning I was troubled with my Lord Hinchingbroke’s sending to borrow $200 of me; but I did answer that I had none, nor could borrow any; for I am resolved I will not be undone for any body, though I would do much for my lord Sandwich, for it is to answer a bill of exchange of his; and I perceive he has made use of all other means in the world to do it, but I am resolved to serve him, but not ruin myself.

To sum up, periodic structure and loose structure are two poles between which styles of sentence structure can vary. Looking back over the history of English prose, we can say that the most neutral style of writing is one that combines both anticipatory and trailing elements, and thus achieves a balance between ‘art’ and ‘nature’. 5)the last is the most important for written language---end-focus/climax principle:

Governed by end-weight principle, we will prefer It is advisable for us to be able to tell documentary English from spoken English. to To be able to tell documentary English from spoken English is advisable for us. Instead of That he was prepared to go to such lengths astounded me. we choose to write I was astounded that he was prepared to go to such lengths.

Governed by end-focus principle, the nuclear tone’s neutral position is at the end of the tone unit, especially on the last lexical item, or ‘content word’: (1a) She completely DENIED it. (1b)She denied it COMPLETELY. (2a) He’s gradually IMPROVING. (2b) He’s improving GRADUALLY. The difference this makes is brought out if we imagine (1a) and (1b) as answers to the following questions respectively:

(3a) Did Joan admit the offence? No, … (3b) Did Joan deny the offence? Yes, … End-focus has important implications in syntax, where the ordering of the elements of the message is largely determined. It can, for example, influence the choice between active and passive sentences: (4a) John wrote the whole BOOK. (4b) The whole book was written by JOHN. In other words, the reader naturally looks for new information at the end of the graphic unit.

This conclusion can be tried out on the following: (5a) Instead of morphine, the patient was given opium. (5b) Instead of morphine, opium was given to the patient. The principle of end-focus predicts that the reader will find (5a) a ‘happier’ sentence than (5b)

6)the first is the most important for spoken language A speaker is rarely able to plan the whole of his utterance in advance, so he tends to begin with the thing which is uppermost in his mind. This ‘first is most important’ principle accounts for some syntactic inversions and dislocations characteristic of ordinary speech: ‘That dinner you cooked last night—I really enjoyed it’; ‘Got a cold have you?’; ‘Relaxation you call it!’

The same factor accounts for frequent disregard in spoken English of the end-focus principle: for example, the last sentence quoted would be pronounced: ↘ RELAXATION you call it! 7)simple and complex sentences We can make the general point that complex sentences are to be preferred if the aim of the writer is to present us with a complex structure of ideas, a complex reading experience.

‘The complex form gives and withholds information, subordinates some ideas to other more important, coordinates those of equal weight, and ties into a neat package as many suggestions, modifiers, and asides as the mind can attend to in one stretch.’ A succession of simple sentences, on the other hand, leaves only sequence to play with. Compare the following:

(1a) Jim threw the ball. The ball broke a window. The noise attracted the owner’s attention. The owner scolded Jim. (1b) Throwing the ball, Jim broke a window. The noise attracted the attention of the owner, who scolded him. (1c) When Jim threw the ball and broke the window, he was scolded by the owner, whose attention was attracted by the noise. Obviously, (1a) represents a naïve narrative style with no indication of the relationship between events, or their relative importance.

There are occasions, however, where simple sentences are just what is needed: (2a) She saw there an object. That object was the gallows. She was afraid of the gallows. (Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, Ch 12) These three sentences occur at the climactic point in the novel where Mrs. Verloc realizes the full consequence of her action in murdering her husband. The dramatic force of this step-by-step revelation would be dissipated in a complex sentence such as :

‘She saw there an object she was afraid of—the gallows’ or ‘The object she saw there—the gallows—frightened her’ Contrast the very different effect of: (3) The tireless resilient voice that had just lobbed this singular remark over the Bella Vista bar window-sil into the square was, though its owner remained unseen, unmistakable and achingly familiar as the spacious flower-boxed balconied hotel itself, and as unreal, Yvonne thought. (Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, Ch 2)

Here we are presented with a more difficult and adventurous reading experience than the three simple sentences of (2a). We also have a sequence of impressions, but they are integrated in a single complex awareness of a number of things which must be going on in the mind of Yvonne, beginning with the voice (the immediate object of perception), moving on to the attendant circumstances of that perception (expressed in subordinate clauses), then to the impression the voice made (‘unmistakable…familiar…unreal’),

and finally to the perceiver herself, Yvonne. The two passages contrast in ordering: (2a) working from the person (‘She’) to the percept (‘the gallows’), and (3) working from the percept (‘the…voice’) to person (‘Yvonne’). But this is incidental to the contrast between simplicity and complexity: the difference between experiencing events one by one, and experiencing them as an articulate and complex whole.

8)coordination and subordination The major devices for linking ideas together into a complex sentence are coordination and subordination. Coordination gives clauses (and other units) equal syntactic status, whereas subordination places one clause in a dependent status, as part of the main clause. Subordination is thus a syntactic form of salience, since the effect of making a clause subordinate is to background it:

to demote the phenomenon it describes into a ‘subservient circumstance’ which cannot be understood except in terms of its part in the main clause. Often a subordinate clause is less salient in the sense of expressing information which is at least partially known or presupposed in advance. In the following sentence, for instance, When Jim threw the ball and broke the window, he was scolded by the owner, whose attention was attracted by the noise.

The effect of placing two events in a subordinate clause (‘When Jim threw the ball and broke the window’) is to imply that the hearer already knows something about them. A similar effect would be created by the relative clause ‘The ball which Jim threw’. We thus may enunciate a general principle of subordination (which is not without its exceptions): If A is subordinate to B, then A is the circumstantial background against which B is highlighted.

It is one of the more routine virtues of prose-writing that a writer brings about, by coordination and subordination, an appropriate salience and back-grounding of parts of the sentence. But as with other rhetorical principles, this principle of subordination may be violated: Curley’s fist was swinging when Lennie reached for it. (John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, Ch 3)

On the face of it, Steinbeck would have done better to write something like: As Curley’s fist was swinging, Lennie reached for it. But what he did write fits in very well with his overall strategy in the novel, that of absolving Lennie of responsibility for his actions. By downgrading Lennie’s part in the fight, he makes it seem an inadvertent and blameless reaction to Curley’s onslaught. A more complex example of a similar kind is this:

The system worked just fine for everybody, especially for Doc. Daneeka, who found himself with all the time he needed to watch old Major—de Coverley pitching horseshoes in his private horseshoe-pitching pit, still wearing the transparent eye patch Doc. Daneeka had fashioned for him from the strip of celluloid stolen from Major’s orderly room window months before when major—de Coverley had returned from Rome with an injured cornea after renting two apartments there for the officers and enlisted men to use on their rest leaves. (Joseph Heller, Catch 22)

There seems to be something rather perverse about the structure of this sentence: the elements which we feel deserve to be in the foreground are subordinated, and therefore backgrounded. The sentence begins with the subject, verb and complement of the main clause, and then nose-dives into a chain-like structure of subordinate clauses (especially non-finite clauses), each dependent on its predecessor.

The syntactic chaining expresses a chain of bizarre relationships between one character and another, in keeping with the eccentric design of this novel, in which characters and events are linked through apparently irrational peculiarities of behavior. 5.What is involved in the methodology of the study?

1)linguistic description. 2)stylistic analysis so as to minimize the intuitive element in criteria of analysis: a. comparison and contrast in the observation of linguistic description of a literary text b. quantitative study of frequency and dis-tribution c. linguistic deviation from the norm---foreground as against the background --- prominence

6.What are the preliminary conditions for the study of stylistics? 1)awareness of prescriptive grammar 2)strong sense of English rhetoric 3)basic knowledge of phonetics, phonology, lexicology, syntax, graphology and semantics 4)understanding of literature as the three dimensional rather than two dimensional

How is stylistics applied to the teaching of English? 1.lexical level: paraphrase 2.syntactic level: structural transformation 3.adverbial mobility 4.sentence type 5.sentence complexity 6.sentence length 7.theme and form 8.the nature of literary stylistics as applied linguistics

Introduction to Stylistics