Key concepts in

Stylistics
What is
stylistic?
Definition:
Stylistics, is a branch of applied linguistics,
in which we study particular style of author
where style is the particular variety of
language used by different individuals in
different situations or settings.
 For example
how Shakespeare is
different from chaucer
● Different writers use different writing
styles so stylistic study them
● Through Different styles writer use
to express his feelings, emotions
and expressions
There are two main styles

Demotic style and Hieratic style

Demotic is informal style while Hieratic is

forml style
● Style is influenced by the age into which
the writer is born
● The basic of good style is clear thinking.
First one should know exactly what he
wishes to say and secondly he should say
it briefly and clearly
● In stylistic we study a style at two levels

● First one is literary and second one is linguistic

● On literary level we examine the images,

symbols, metaphors, idioms, simile

● The linguistic level is based on linguistic items

such as sounds, vocabulary, morphology,
Syntax and semantics
Purpose of stylistics
● Language experience
● Study of multiple literary devices
● Study how message is being is
being conveyed
Stylistic and levels of language
There are different levels of
language. We have to decide on
which level we are going to analyse
the text
Here is a list of the major
levels of language along
with a brief description
of what each level:
 1 Phonological
level
It deals with the study
of sounds or the way
words are pronounced.
 2)Graphological level

It deals with patterns of

written language:the
shape of language on the
page.
3)Morphological
Level
It deals with the way
words are
constructed; words
and their constituent
structures.
 4)Syntactic level

It deals with the way

words combine with other
words to form phrases
and sentences.
 5) lexical
level
It deals with the words
we use; the vocabulary
of a language.
6) Semantics
level
It deals with the
meaning of words
and sentences.
 7) Pragmatics
level
It deals with the way words
and sentences are used in
everyday situations; the
meaning of language in
context.
 Grammar and style
Grammar consists of the rules governing
language use: verb conjugation, verb-subject
agreement, word roles (subject, verb, object,
preposition, etc.), and the like. Style is the way
in which one writes, and its "rightness" or
"wrongness" (or "goodness" or "badness").
Grammar
Grammar consists of rules,
same the way as there is
rules of tennis, chess etc
and without these rules no
game is complete similarly
without the rules of
grammar no language is
complete
Style
Style is related to
choice of words used
by specific group of
people when they
speak or write.
 Rhythm and
metre Narrative
stylistic Style as
choice
Rhythm and
metre

• Rhythm refers to continuity, recurrence or organized movement

in space and time. It is based on repetition. Rhythm is the
basic element of music. Music can not exist without music.

• Sound patterns plays a pivotal role in literary discourse in general

and in poetry particular.
Rhythm and
metre
•Techniques writer used for representing accent, one aspect of
spoken discourse, in prose fiction and directly deals with issues of
sound patterning in literature and it introduce core features like
rhythm and metre which have an important bearing on the
structure and indeed interpretation of the poetry.

• Metre are with in poems. Metre is what gives a poem its

unique rhythm. In traditional English poetry metre has two
parts.
• The first is the number of syllables in each line.
• The second is which syllable sound stronger than other.
Narrative
stylistics
• Narrative discourse provides a way of recapitulating felt experience
by matching up patterns of language to a connected series of
events. In its most minimal form, a narrative comprises two clauses
which are temporally ordered, such that a change in their order will
result in a change in the way we interpret the assumed chronology
of the narrative events. For example, the two narrative clauses in
• (1) John dropped the plates and Janet laughed suddenly
• suggest a temporal progression between the two actions
described. Indeed, not only do we assume that John’s mishap
preceded Janet’s response, but also that it was his mishap that
brought about her response.
Narrative
stylistics
• However, reversing the clauses to form‘Janet laughed suddenly and
John dropped the plates’ would invite a different interpretation:
that is, that Janet’s laughter not only preceded but actually
precipitated John’s misfortune.
Narrative
stylistic
Of course, most narratives, whether those of canonical prose fiction
•
or of the spontaneous stories of everyday social interaction, have
rather more to offer than just two simple temporally arranged
clauses. Narrative requires development, elaboration,
embellishment; and it requires a sufficient degree of stylistic
flourish to give it an imprint of individuality or personality. Stories
narrated without that flourish will often feel flat and dull. On this
issue, the sociolinguist William Labov has argued that narratives
require certain essential elements of structure which, when absent,
render the narrative ‘ill- formed’.
Style as
Choice
•Choices in style are motivate,even if unconsciously, and these
choices have a profound impact on the way text are structured and
interpreted.

• The experiential function is an important marker of style, especially

that of narrative discourse because it emphasizes the concept style
as choice.
Transitivity
• This is the system in which the particular grammatical facility is
used for capturing experience in language.

• Transitivity used in a more expanded semantic sense Than that used

in traditional grammars where it simply serves to identify verbs
which take direct objects

• Transitivity refers to the way meanings are encoded in the clause

and to the way different type of process are presented in
language.
 Transitivity
In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that
relates to whether a verb can take direct objects and
how many such objects a verb can take. It is closely
related to valency, which considers other verb
arguments in addition to direct objects. 
Three key component of processes
in Transitivity.
• 1) The process itself, which is typically realized in grammar by
the verb phrase.
• 2) The participant(s) associated with the process, typically realized
by noun phrases.
• 3) The less importantly for stylistic analysis, the circumstances
associated with the process. This is typically expressed by
prepositional and adverb phrase(the adjunct element in
clause structure.
STYLISTIC
S
1. STYLE AND POINT OF VIEW
2.REPRESENTING SPEECH
AND THOUGHT
3. DIALOGUE AND
DISCOURSE
Style and point
of view
Style and point of
view
• This depends upon who is telling the story. The
narrator is the person or character who is telling
the story
• Almost all stories can be classified into two
main categories according to their point of
view:
 First Person Narrator
 Third Person Narrator
• There are five subdivisions under these
categories.
FIRST PERSON
NARRATOR
• A first-person point of view means that one
of the characters is telling the story: “I
walked slowly, wishing I could turn and run
instead of facing Mrs. Grunch.”
 A. “I” as secondary character
 B. “I” as protagonist
FIRST PERSON
NARRATOR
• The narrator in first person stories should
never be confused with the author. We must
remember that the narrator is created by the
author.
• First-Person In first person stories the author
has no more than ordinary access to the
thoughts, emotions and mental states of the
other characters. The reader only has available
the observations, thoughts, feelings, and
perceptions of the narrator.
THIRD PERSON
NARRATOR
• A third-person point of view means that
someone outside of the story is telling it:
“She walked slowly, wishing she could turn
and run instead of facing Mrs. Grunch.”
 A. Multiple omniscience
 B. Selective omniscience
 C. Dramatic or Objective
• MULTIPLE OMNISCIENCE: The author gives
us access to the minds and thoughts of
several characters in the story.
• SELECTIVE OMNISCIENCE: It limits us to
the mind of only one character, generally
the protagonist.
• DRAMATIC OR OBJECTIVE: It limits us
even further to what the characters do
and say.
REPRESENTIN
G SPEECH
AND THOUGHT
REPRESENTING SPEECH
AND THOUGHT
• Stylisticians are keen to examine the methods
which writers use for transcribing the speech
and thoughts of other people, whether
these people be imagined characters in a
novel or, in the case of everyday ‘social’
stories, real individuals.
• concepts in speech and thought presentation
are those of direct and indirect speech.
Direct Speech
(DS)
• In this mode, the reported clause, which tells
us what was said, is enclosed within quotation
marks, while the reporting clause (which tells
us who did the reporting) is situated around it.
• Examples
 She said, ‘I’ll come here tomorrow.’
 ‘I’ll come here tomorrow,’ she said.
Indirect Speech
(IS)
• Indirect speech is a means of expressing the
content of statements, questions or other
utterances, without quoting them explicitly as
is done in direct speech.
• Example
She said that she would go there the
following day.
DIALOGUE
AND
DISCOURSE
Dialogue in
drama
• Short argues that interaction works mainly on two
levels,
• one level of discourse embedded inside another.
• Short’s schema is useful in a number of ways. It
shows how the utterances that pass from one
character to another become part of what the
playwright ‘tells’ the audience.
• It also differentiates two sets of interactive contexts:
the fictional context surrounding the characters
within the world of the play, and
the ‘real’ context framing the interaction
between author and reader.
Understanding dialogue
in drama
• Context:
All naturally occurring language
takes place in a context of use. We can divide up
the notion of context into three basic
categories:
 Physical context
 Personal context
 Cognitive context
Physical
context
• This is the actual setting in which interaction
takes place. Physical context may be constituted
by the workplace, the home environment or by
a public area.
• In face-to-face conversation, speaker and
hearer share the same physical context,
although in some forms of spoken interaction,
such as broadcast or telephone talk, speaker
and hearer are physically separated.
Personal
context
• This refers to the social and personal
relationships of the interactants to one another.
Personal context also encompasses social
networks and group membership, the social
and institutional roles of speakers and hearers.
Cognitive
context
• This refers to the shared and background
knowledge held by participants in
interaction.
• It also extends to a speaker’s world-view,
cultural knowledge and past experiences
 
COGNITIVE
STYLISTICS
METAPHOR
& METANOMY
 S T Y L I S T I C S AND
VERBAL HUMOUR
 cognitive Stylistics

 Cognitive stylistics is an advanced field on
the crossroads of linguistics, cognitive science
and literary studies.
 Cognitive stylistics approach is suitable to explain
the linguistic construction of world-view in texts.
 Origin

 I. A. Richards laid the foundations for cognitive
stylistics. It was from cognitive psychology that
Richards drew upon to build a theory of literature
and interpretation – which in itself prefigured
cognitive stylistics.
 Cognitive stylistics

 Cognitive stylistics is the interface between
linguistics, literary studies and cognitive science.
 It extends the boundaries of linguistic analysis
of literature by articulating different theories
such as schema theory, cognitive metaphor
theory or conceptual metaphor theory.
 Metaphor

 A figure of speech in which a word or phrase
is applied to an object or action to which it is
not literally applicable
 A metaphor is a process of mapping between two
different conceptual domains, the target domain
and the source domain.
 She really blew her lid.
 
 the target domain is our understanding of
the concept of anger.
 The source can be conceptualised as ‘heated fluid
in a container’.
 Metonymy

 In contrast with metaphor, metonymy is based on
a transfer within a single conceptual domain.
 Staying within the boundaries of the same domain,
metonymy involves transpositions between
associated concepts.
 
 metonymy involves transpositions between
associated concepts and this commonly results in
transfer between
 the part and the whole, (‘a fresh pair of legs’)
 a producer and the produced (‘Have you read
the new Kate Atkinson?’)
 an institution and its location (The Pentagon
refused)
 Puns and verbal play

 One of the most commonly used stylistic devices
for creating humour is the pun.
 In its broadest sense, a pun is a form of word-play
in which some feature of linguistic structure
simultaneously combines two unrelated meanings.
 “Rape of the lock”
 Parody and satire

 Parody and satire are forms of verbal humour
whcih draw on a particular kind of irony.
 Irony is situated in the space between what you
asy and what you mean, as embodied in an
utterance like ‘You’re a fine friend!’ when said to
someone who has just let you down.
 The distinction between parody and satire is not
an easy one to draw, but it is commonly assumed
that satire has an aggressive element which is not
necessarily present in parody.