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Stylistics is the scientific study of style that determines how readers meet with the language of, mainly literary, texts in order to explain how one understands and is affected by texts when reading them. More properly, stylistics is concerned with the linguistic features of a literary text, i.e. grammar, lexis, semantics, as well as phonological properties and discursive devices. The same issues are investigated by sociolinguistics, but they are dependent on the social class, gender, age, etc. while stylistics deals with the importance of function that is fulfilled by style.

Stylistics examines oral and written texts in order to determine important characteristics, linguistic properties, structures and patterns influencing perception of the texts. It can be said that this branch of linguistics is related to discourse analysis, in particular critical discourse analysis, and pragmatics. 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.According to Katie Wales in A Dictionary of Stylistics, the goal of “most stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake, but in order to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text; or in order to relate literary effects to linguistic ’causes’ where these are felt to be relevant.”

There are various inter-mingled sub-disciplines of stylistics, including literary, interpretive, evaluative, corpus, discourse, feminist, computational and cognitive stylistics; a person who studies any of these is known as a stylistician. The science that has style as its object of study raises many problems when trying to define it and set its field of investigation. One of the possible solutions could be that of constantly considering it against a background of related domains. There are mainly three perspectives that influence the possible definitions of stylistics.

1. There are some theorists who believe that stylistics should be included either in the field of literature or in that of linguistics with any possible compromise: the direction based upon the style itself is adopted by Wales (1991) who states that: “Stylistics is the study of style; yet, there are several different stylistic approaches. This variety in Stylistics is due to main influences of linguistics and literary criticism. [ … ] The goal of most stylistic studies is not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake, but in order to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text, or in order to relate literary facts to linguistic ’causes’ where these are felt to be relevant.”

I R Galperin assigns stylistics to the area of linguistics exclusively, and gives it two main directions of research as a science:”Stylistics, also called linguo-stylistics, is a branch of general linguistics. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: a) the investigation of the inventory of special language media, which by their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance, and b) certain types of texts (discourse), which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication.”

2. From a different perspective, H G Widdowson (1997) suggests a definition of stylistics that sendsits interdisciplinary character somewhere at the border between literary criticism and linguistics: “By ‘stylistics’ I mean the study of literary discourse from a linguistic orientation and I shall take the view that distinguishes stylistics from literary criticism on the one hand and linguistics on the other is that it is essentially a means of linking the two and has (as yet at least) no autonomous domain of its own. […] Stylistics, however, involves both literary criticism and linguistics as its morphological make-up suggests: the ‘style’ component relating it to the former and the ‘what characteristics’ component to the latter.”

3. Finally, members of the third party grant it an autonomous existence among other related sciences. The definition that we favour and adopt is the one proposed by Short (1997:1): “An approach to the analysis of literary texts, using linguistic description.”

Style has been an object of study from ancient times. Aristotle, Cicero, Demetrius and Quintilian treated style as the proper adornment of thought. In this view, which prevailed throughout the Renaissance period, devices of style can be found in which the essayist or orator is expected to frame his ideas with the help of model sentences and prescribed kinds of ‘figures’ suitable to his mode of discourse. Modern stylistics uses the tools of formal linguistic analysis; its goal is to try to isolate characteristic uses and functions of language and rhetoric rather than prescriptive rules and patterns.

The traditional idea of style as something properly added to thoughts contrasts with the ideas that derive from Charles Bally (1865-1947), the Swiss philologist, and Leo Spitzer (1887-1960), the Austrian literary critic. According to followers of these thinkers, style in language arises from the possibility of choice among alternative forms of expression, as for example, children, kids, youngsters and youths; each of these has a different value. This theory emphasises the relation between style and linguistics, as does the theory of Edward Sapir who talked about literature that is form-based (Algernon Charles Swinburne, Paul Verlaine, Horace, Catullus, Virgil, and much of Latin literature) and literature that is content-based (Homer, Plato, Dante, William Shakespeare) and the near untranslatability of the former. A linguist, for example, less indulges in imagery and meaning, might note the effective placing of dental and palatal spirants in Verlaine’s famous

Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne

Blessent mon coeur d’une langueur monotone,

Tout suffocant et blême quand sonne l’heure,

Je me souviens des jours anciens, et je pleure.

The impressionistic “slow, dragging” effect of Edgar Allan Poe’s

“On desperate seas long wont to roam” can be made more objective by the linguist’s knowledge of the stress contour or intonation. Here the predominance of the stronger primary and secondary stresses creates the drawn-out interminable effect.

Style is also seen as a mark of character. The Count de Buffon’s famous epigram “Le style est l’homme même” (“Style is the man himself”) in his Discourse sure style (1753), and Arthur Schopenhauer’s definition of style as “the physiognomy of the mind” suggest that, no matter how calculated choices may be made, a writer’s style will bear the mark of his personality. An experienced writer is able to rely on the power of his habitual choices of sounds, words, and syntactic patterns to convey his personality or fundamental outlook.

Historically speaking, the study of style can be traced back to the literary scholarships of the Greeks and Romans in the fifth century BC in which rhetoric was the dominant art. This discipline was a set of rules and strategies which enable rhetors and orators ‘to speak well’; in other words to use language that is fully decorated with all the figures and tropes to bring about changes in the feelings and opinions of the audience.

Gradually, such a discipline expanded from rhetoric to incorporate other linguistic discourses. That is, a new dimension called Poetics and dealing with the theory of beauty had branched out of rhetorical stylistics. Following the rhetoric approach, yet different in domain, it was concerned again with ‘eloquent discourse’ called in Greek techn? rh?torik?. The emphasis was now on the aesthetic function of language. In other words, the language of literature was viewed as the aesthetic employment for the transmission of thought. Therefore, they concentrated their literary efforts on elements such as diction, metaphors, images and symbols, utilized for embellishing the subject matter of a given piece of literary work. That is, great importance was given to the choice and artistic arrangement of words. In this sense, such a practice is seen as aesthetic stylistics as it is ornamental in its approach. It is an extension, which asserts the dogma that sees the special use of language as ‘the dress of thought.’ In addition, this is what Dryden has illustrated in his Preface to Anni Mirabiles:

So then the first happiness of the poet’s imagination is properly invention, or finding of the thought; the second is fancy, or the variation, deriving or moulding of that thought, as the judgment represents it proper to the subject; the third is elocution, or the art of clothing or adorning that thought so found and varied in apt, significant and sounding words. (Quoted in Hough 1969: 3).

Thus, the tradition of eloquence considerably perpetuated itself and the form and content separation dominated the literary movement up to the 18th century where the emphasis was on the effective and attractive use of language. Adopting Quintillion’s conception of style that ‘custom is the most mistress of language’, the studies of the 15th and 16th century’s emphasis, besides adhering to the classical grammar, spelling, and rhetorical fabrics: the revival of old (archaic) English words; and the free use of language which was marked by the perspective syntax and word-order. (Galperin 1977: 46, 47). In the 17th century, literary critics saw necessity in ‘refining, polishing, and improving the literary language.’ Besides, the insistence on the proper selection of words, there was also a strong movement towards, ‘restricting literary English to a simple colloquial language which would easily be understood by the ordinary people.’ (ibid: 51). Dryden, the most dominating critic of the age, illustrates in his ‘Essay on Dramatic Poesy’ the status of the literary language at the time:

I have always acknowledged the wit of our predecessors (. . .) but I am sure their wit was not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat that was ill-bred and clownish in it and which confessed the conversation of the authors (. . .) In the age wherein these poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours; neither did they keep the best company of theirs (their age). . . The discourse and raillery of our comedies excel what has been written by them. (Quoted in Galperin 1977: 51).

The attitude of the 18th century was predicated upon the establishment of the norms of the English language. Jonathan Swift, one of the pioneers in the movement, insisted on ‘Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue’ as opposed to the ‘vulgar slanginess’ and ‘intolerable preciosity.’ His often-quoted definition of style as, ‘proper words in proper places’, clarify the concern in this literary epoch. Towards the beginning of the 19th century, the interest in the study of literary language took another direction. The use of language in literature was no longer seen as a product of an established set of rules and devices but an orientation toward ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. That every writer had a natural, linguistic, and idiosyncratic way of expressing ideas led to the identification of style with man and his thought. It advocates that the expressive rather than the aesthetic properties which have to be adopted. In the light of such perspective, there is a revival of Cicero’s conception of style as “an expression of personality.” (Atkins 1952: 31). This way of entertaining the language of literature is known as individual stylistics.

The belief that every writer had a different style led everyone to begin to search for their own technique – their individual way of expressing ideas. In turn, this tendency stimulated linguists to entertain the different, individual uses in literary discourse – the way in which a writer expresses himself. The study of language variations was then accentuated by the emergence of modern linguistics in the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. It flourished with the advent of modern linguistics particularly the work done by Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist, in his Cours de linguistique générale. His theory of language discusses a set of opposed categories- ‘signified’ and ‘signifier’ which makes a sign; ‘diachronic’ and ‘synchronic’ approaches to language; ‘syntagmatic’ and ‘paradigmatic’ relations and; ‘langue’ and ‘parole’ systems of language- and is still influential till date. His discovery of these categories is of great use in stylistic analysis. As far as linguistic contribution to literary analysis is concerned, the weight he put in the significance of synchronic studies swerved the direction to include the study of the language of literature. Furthermore, the distinction he set between langue and parole found its way into stylistics. Where langue refers to the general, abstract system of language shared by a homogenous speech community, parole is defined as the realized, concrete manifestation of language, i.e. utterance. Accordingly, parole is then seen as having stylistic significance because any linguistically oriented stylistic study has to be concerned with the consciously patterned and highly individualized use of the writer’s language. In short, style pertains to parole, the property of “selection from a total linguistic repertoire” (Leech and Short 1981: 11), it is the linguistic characteristics that a text exposes.

It is obvious then from the above analysis that the conceptual basis of modern stylistics is rooted in three different but somehow related disciplines: rhetoric, literary criticism, and linguistics. Later, linguistic investigation to language in turn split into three major areas: formalism (Russian formalistic theory and later New Criticism), structuralism (Bally’s expressive theory, Jakobsonian theory, affective theory) and functionalism (the discourse and contextual theories and Halliday’s systemic theory).

At the turn of the 20th century, language studies triggered the birth of a new discipline, which stands in direct opposition to the approaches that sees literature as the outcome of the extrinsic properties of historical, cultural and biographical factors to the exclusion of the linguistic form. It is Charles Bally, a Geneva linguist whose work in stylistics developed out of a Saussurian thought, who gave the impetus to such systematic studies with the publication of his Traité de Stylistique. (Taylor: 1980: 21). He stresses on the role of expressiveness in language and the function of language in interaction as they have the task of communicating thought. Bally believes that language integrates feeling and thought and therefore any linguistic fact should combine language and thought. Subsequently, a speaker, (in this context a writer), can give his subjective idea or thought a linguistic form that corresponds to reality. Bally in this regard believes that:

Stylistics studies the elements of a language organized from the point of view of their affective content; that is, the expression of emotion by language as well as the effect of language on the emotions. (Taylor: 1980: 23).

Literary criticism in the past few years has come to realize the importance of studying the language of literature which is one of the most complex and multifaceted phenomena. This has been done not with the help of rhetoric, but with the help of linguistics. In the history of English literary criticism, this initiative was made by I .A Richards (1929) and William Empson (1930). This new tendency in literary criticism did not receive any new label at that time. But the ‘Why’ and ‘How1 of language teaching became the major questions of that time. Spitzer (1988) is a biographical introduction of the champions of the new criticism. He put forth a new method of studying the language of literature. His method is based on a minute statistical study of the technique of language combined with a judicious use of the theories of linguistics. This sort of study has come to be known as ‘stylistics’.

The world of literary criticism is full of theories which focus on different aspects of literature in attempts to investigate its function, nature and effect. Abrams made commendable efforts to summarise the overwhelming variety of critical theories from the classical to the modem times into four-fold categories of expressive, pragmatic, mimetic and objective theories (Abrams.1972, first published in 1953). With this comprehensive framework suggested by him, however, there still remains a vast residue of other categories of literary scholarship like the study of literary history, convention, genre and mythology.

The universal appeal of literature can be traced as it is rightly pointed out by Ching et. al. (1980), the capacity and primacy of all human beings “to conceptualise, reshape and communicate the experiences of life through language “(p.5). Language is not merely an incidental medium of literature; it is an integral part of the whole creative process. In the modern times many scholars have attempted to investigate literature through the features of its language as well as the assumption regarding the inseparability of literature and its language.

To sum up, stylistics can be seen: 1. Primarily as a sub – department of linguistics, when dealing with the peculiarities of literary texts; 2. Secondly, it can be a sub – department of literary study, when it draws only occasionally on linguistic methods; 3. Thirdly, it can be regarded as an autonomous discipline when it draws on methods from both linguistics and literary study.

Each of these three approaches has its own virtues. However, one should keep in mind that to study styles as types of linguistic variations and to describe the style of one particular text for a literary purpose are two different activities. Moreover, by studying the stylistic properties, one can grasp the worldview of the author. He postulates that: ‘The only way,’ to discover the inner traits ‘is to read and reread, patiently and confidently, in an endeavor to become, as it were, soaked through and through with the atmosphere of the work.’

The writer is Assistant Professor in English at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamshoro Sindh