Stylistics of the English Language. Theoretical Framework

1. Stylistics of the English Language Koroteeva Valentina Vladimirovna, [email protected]

2. Theoretical Framework

Galperin, J.R., Stylistics. Moscow, 1981.
Kukharenko, V.A., A Book of Practice in Stylistics. Moscow, 1986.
Shakhhovsky, V.I., English Stylistics. M.: URSS. 2013. 232 p.
Skrebnev, Y.M., Fundamentals of English Stylistics. Moscow, 1994.
Znamenskaya T.A., Stylistics of the English Language. Moscow, 2005.
Арнольд И.В., Стилистика. Современный
английский язык. М., 2002.
Гальперин И.Р., Текст как объект
лингвистического исследования. М.,1981.
Кухаренко В. А. Интерпретация текста. М.,
1988.
Landon, Brooks, Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft. Chantilly,
VA : The Teaching Company, 2008.
Leech, G., Short, M., Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional
Prose. Second Edition. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited. 2007.
The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. Edited by Michael Burke. London and New
York, Routledge, 2014.
Wright, Laura, and Hope, Jonathan, Stylistics. A practical Coursebook. London and
New York, Routledge, 2005.

3. Outline

The origins of stylistics: Aristotle
The origins of modern stylistics
Definition of style
Subject matter of stylistics

4. The Origins of Stylistics

The rhetoric of the ancient classical
world: Aristotle and Plato
Three kinds of style:
the high, florid style
the low style
the middle style

5. Aristotle teaching Rhetoric

6. The Origins of Stylistics: Aristotle and the Art of Rhetoric

Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) five canons of
rhetoric: 1) the textual material is
generated; 2) ordered for optimal
effect; 3) stylised; 4) memorised;
5)delivered.
Stylisation (clarity and
appropriateness + style figures:
“schemes” and “tropes”)

7. The Origins of Rhetoric: Aristotelian Rhetorical Triangle

TEXT
“word/topic”
AUDIENCE/READER
“suffering”
SPEAKER/WRITER
“character”

8. The New Yorker “We must really be stalled this time”

9. The Origins of Modern Stylistics

19th century – literary criticism – the
focus on the AUTHOR - ethos
1910-1920s – linguistic analysis/stylistics
- Russian formalists (Roman Jakobson,
Viktor Shklovsky, Vladimir Propp) +
1930s – the Prague School (Roman
Jakobson, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Rene
Wellek, Vilem Mathesius –
TEXT+CONTEXT- logos+ethos
1990s - decoding stylistics (Irina Arnold)–
pragmatic aspect – THE READER - pathos

10. The Origins of Modern Stylistics: Jacobson-the Prague Structuralists

the foregrounding theory: some parts of
text have more effect on the reader
because the textual parts are linguistically
deviant, thus psychologically salient for
readers:
“The brief respite (interval of relief) was over; all
my anxieties came back. I was once more
a doubting, disconcerted, depressed
creature when I rose to say good-by.”
[W.Collins, The Law and the Lady, p.63]

11. Stylistician = Sherlock Holmes

“A stylistician – a person who with his/her knowledge
of the workings of
morphology
phonology
lexis
syntax
semantics
discourse and pragmatic models
goes in search of language-based evidence to
support or challenge the subjective
interpretations of critics”
[Burke 2014, p.2]

12. Compare: examples

“You’d better believe I like
hamburgers!”
“Don’t you think hamburgers are
just fabulous?”
“My gastronomic preferences
include, but are not limited to, that
peculiarly American version of
sandwich known as hamburger. ”

13. A stylistician deals with

Grammar and Word Choice tools
Rhetoric – utilising the tools to
render a particular emotional effect

14. Approaches to Stylistics

gender (gender concerns)
multimodal (multi-semiotic modes – film narrative)
neuroscientific (patterns in human emotion)
corpus (the use of corpora)
critical (ideology)
cognitive (an author’s idiolect through the analysis features of
mental bahavious)
pedagogical (teaching language)
pragmatic (speech acts, socio-cultural information)

15. Style

a historical period
a literary movement
an individual writer
a particular book
a certain type of text
a certain type of sentence

16. Style – 18th century

“Writing well consists of thinking,
feeling and expressing well, of
clarity of mind, soul and taste…The
style is the man himself.”
[Leclerc,
French naturalist, 1707-1788]

17. Style – 20th century – writer’s approach

“Young writers often suppose that
style is a garnish (a decoration) for the
meat of prose, a sauce by which a
dull dish is made palatable. Style
has no separate entity, it is
nondetachable, unfilterable.”
[White E.B., Strunk W.,
The Elements of Style, 1959]

18. Style – 20th century – linguist’s approach

“Style is a system of interrelated
language means which serves a
definite aim in communication.”
[Galperin 1971, p.18]

19. Subject Matter of Stylistics

the inventory of the special
language means that secure the
desirable effect of the utterance
different types of texts (written in a
certain functional style) which can
be distinguished due to the choice
and arrangement of language
means employed

20. Type of Text - Functional Style?

21. Type of Text - Functional Style?

The day was enticingly (temptingly)
beautiful, and the tide was on the
ebb (the flowing back of the tide from high to low water or the period
in which this takes place).

22. Type of Text - Functional Style?

Stylistics is a subject to be enjoyed. You should
not lose sight of this fact when you are reading
the chapters in this volume and writing your own
analyses. Stylistics is going places and now is
the time for you to get on board. It is a
welcoming guest in many intellectual homes in
many locations across disciplines such as
communication studies, rhetoric, pragmatics,
discourse analysis, applied linguistics, literary
studies, film, television and theatre studies,
museum studies and so on.

23. Type of Text - Functional Style?

Passport control at the airport:
-Nationality?
-Russian.
-Occupation?
-No, no, just visiting.

24.

Thank you for your attention
??