Describing Stylistics as a Concept in English Studies

Describing Stylistics as a Concept in English Studies

Definition

Stylistics applies linguistics to literature in the hope of arriving

at analyses which are more broadly based, rigorous and objective. The

pioneers were the Prague and Russian schools, but their approaches

have been appropriated and extended by radical theory in recent years.

Stylistics can be evaluative (i.e. judge the literary worth on

stylistic criteria), but more commonly attempts to simply analyse and

describe the workings of texts which have already been selected as

noteworthy on other grounds.

Stylistic analysis in linguistics refers to the identification of

patterns of usage in speech and writing. Analyses can appear

objective, detailed and technical, even requiring computer assistance,

but some caution is needed.

Stylistic analysis in literary studies is usually made for the purpose

of commenting on quality and meaning in a text. Linguistics is

currently a battlefield of contending theories, with no settlement in

sight. Many critics have no formal training in linguistics, or even

proper reading, and are apt to build on theories (commonly those of

Saussure or Jacobson) that are inappropriate and/or no longer

accepted. Some of the commonest terms, e.g. deep structure,

foregrounding, have little or no experimental support.

Linguistics has rather different objectives, moreover: to study

languages in their entirety and generality, not their use in art

forms. Stylistic excellence — intelligence, originality, density and

variety of verbal devices — play their part in literature, but

aesthetics has long recognized that other aspects are equally

impor...

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... This method purports to be fairly scientific. A hypothesis is stated

and then proved. It is a useful discipline, which encourages logical

thought and can be transferred to many other areas of academic study.

This is one reason why the discipline of stylistic analysis is so

useful: it can be applied to a variety of subjects.

CONCLUSION

Stylistics continues to face its status as a discipline operating

among all other disciplines, from which it historically has drawn

both its goals and its methods. Work being done in the last quarter of

the century on historical and contextual readings of literary and

nonliterary texts suggests that stylistic models can be expanded

sufficiently to allow the discipline to continue to draw upon all

related fields adequately for its own purposes while maintaining its

own autonomy.