10

Lecture 1

The Subject and the Aim of Stylistics

Information Theory in Stylistics

Types of Stylistics

Lecture Outline

1. The subject and the aim of stylistics.

2. Main components of Information Theory.

3. Linguistic signals of addressee-orientation. Typology of addressee-orientation signals in a literary text.

4. Types of stylistics:

1. Evolution of text interpretations in the linguistic aspect. Main paradigms of linguistic sty listics;

2. Types of literary stylistics.

5. Main concepts of stylistics: style, norm, context.

6. Paradigmatics. Syntagmatics. Variant and invariant meaning. The notion of

a stylistic opposition.

7. The notions of an expressive means and a stylistic device.

While studying the objective reality the object and the subject of any science are usually differentiated.

The object is a material body, phenomenon or a process, that exists in the reality irrespective of any human activity or human consciousness.

The process of studying (investigation) of any object of the reality is a very complicated process. That’s why each science studies only one aspect of the object of the reality. And this aspect of investigation is the subject of the given science. Thus, the object of the science can exist irrespective of us, while the subject of the science is formed by the science itself.

The object of linguistics is human language, but due to the complicacy of the language itself, it is studied by many sciences: lexicology, phonetics, grammar and others. And each of them has its own subject of investigation.

Stylistics studies units of all language levels (phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactical and even graphical) from the functional point of view. It studies functioning of some units of the language system, of some language subsystems (the so called “functional styles of the language”), and functioning of the language system as a whole.

As stylistics analyses language from the functional point of view, it is necessary to define the notion of “function” and to differentiate it from the notion of “aim”.

“Function” can be defined as a destination of an element in an artificial system (because language is an artificially created system), or a destination of the whole system in its medium. The term “function” was taken from mathematics and logics and is used now in linguistics in the meaning of “the role, the aim in the model of a language”. The term and its definition was proposed by the Prague linguistic (circle) school. But from our point of view the difference between the function and the aim is principal.

The subject of stylistics is the analysis of the means of realization of the main functions of language (they are: communicative and cognitive functions) and the additional functions of language, which provide the effectiveness of speech activity of any person.

Commonly the aim of communication is supposed to be in conveying information. But any act of communication comes not only to the simple conveying (sending) of information. Whenever a speaker intends to say something, it is always with the aim to achieve some practical result which lies apart from his speech activity. Namely, he intends to change either the psychological or mental state of the listener or his physical state. But to achieve this aim (which is practical, pragmatic aim) the speaker first has to set forth a constructive lingual aim — to construct such an utterance (or such a text) which is the most suitable for achieving this pragmatic aim in the concrete speech situation.

To realize the aim the speaker has to select and use the means and the devices of the given language system (graphical, phonetic, lexical, grammatical, syntactical means and different stylistic devices).

That’s why stylistics can be defined as a science, studying (analysing) communicative and nominative resources of the language system; it also studies the principles of selection and usage of language means for conveying speaker’s thoughts and feelings with the aim of achieving concrete pragmatic result in different communicative situations.

Nowadays some methods and concepts of such sciences as cybernetics, formal and informal logic, information theory are adopted in linguistics.

Application of some concepts of information theory in stylistics proved to be especially useful.

Information theory first appeared in the 30s of the 20^th century as an applied science which dealt with the problems of the transmission channels. In the 40s Vinner and Shannon considered information theory to be the branch of cybernetics. Later on scientists noticed that processes the information theory deals with are analogous to some peculiar features of human mental activity. And still later on in some works some main concepts of information theory were analysed in application to different spheres of human activity — in application to language, science and art. (Филипьев Ю.А. Сигналы эстетической информации. М., Наука, 1971.).

The main concept of this theory is the concept of “information”. There are two kinds of information in semantics of an utterance: the main information — denotative, and the additional information — connotative. Denotative information is the subject of information itself, it does not depend upon the act of communication, and it names the notion of the reality as it is.

Connotative information depends upon the act of communication, is conditioned by the attitude of the speaker to the subject of speech or to the addressee, conveys his membership of this or that social group (social affiliation), his emotional state.

E.g. intelligence officer – spy

розвідник - шпигун

a writer – a scribbler

повстання – заколот

a girl – a maiden

Now let us study the scheme of conveying information.

Information Signal

A sender of information Coder Transmission Decoder A receiver of

Thesaurus channel information

Thesaurus

A n addresser An addressee

(a speaker (a hearer

a writer) a reader)

“A sender of information” (an addresser) is any object (a man or a machine) that can send, store and use information. The necessary component of any addresser (sender) as well as any receiver is the block of memory or thesaurus. Thesaurus is a person’s stock of knowledge and experience. Information is the thoughts and the feelings that the sender wants to transmit (to send) or, to be more correct, that he wants to arouse in the receiver (a hearer, a reader). The thoughts and the feelings should be materialized or expressed in the form of words, utterances, in pictures or in other things of art.

That’s why the coder (or encoder) can be defined as a means of turning information (thoughts and feelings) into a signal (texts, novels, pictures, etc.). Any coder consists of 2 parts: a coder mechanism itself — human organs of speech and thought and a code. The universal and the most wide-spread code is the human language, which is regarded to be the first semiotic system. On the basis of the first semiotic system more complicated codes — secondary semiotic systems are formed. The language of fiction, poetry, music, the language of social etiquette are the secondary semiotic systems.

In linguistics the notion of “the transmission channel” is defined as the medium (in physical, social, historical and cultural aspect), in which the signal exists and functions. Relations of the signal (a novel, a story, a poem) with the transmission channel and with receivers assume the possibility of different interpretations of any utterance or any text (any work of art).

A decoder also consists of two parts: a reception mechanism and a code, which is supposed to be analogous to the code of the sender of this information. A decoder “extracts” the information from the signal. A receiver or an addressee can be a man or a machine.

An addresser of information (a writer, a speaker) can use different linguistic signals of addressee-orientation (SAO).

Linguistic signals of addressee-orientation in a literary text – are text elements of any language level (from a grapheme to a paragraph), which trigger the reader’s cognitive and emotional text processing. Linguistic signals of addressee-orientation also keep reader’s text processing going in line with the in-text interpretation pattern.

Linguistic signals may be:

1) Specialized SAO:

1. Direct addresses

Don’t tell me. Do me a favor and let me guess. Be honest with me, tell the truth, don’t make me laugh…

(Gordon Lish. The Merry Chase)

2. You-phrases

You sit in the Neptune Theatre waiting for the thin, overhead lights to dim with a sense of respect, perhaps even reverence, for American movie houses are, as everyone knows, the new cathedrals, their stories better remembered than legends, totems, or mythologies, their directors more popular than novelists, more influential than saints-enough people, you've been told, have seen the James Bond adventures to fill the entire country of Argentina. …

(Charles Johnson. Moving Pictures)

2) Non-specialized SAO:

1. Indirect addresses

He (the living) dressed and shaved grinning at himself in the mirror. Very handsome, he said: where is my tie? (He had but one.)

(William Saroyan. The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze)

2. Implicit triggers

Once upon a time, suddenly, while it still could, the story began. For the hero, setting forth, there was of course nothing sudden about it … . For the dragon, however, who was stupid, everything was sudden. He was suddenly hungry and then he was suddenly eating something. … Freedom? the dragon might have asked, had he not been stupid, chewing over meanwhile the sudden familiar sourness (a memory…?) on his breath. From what? (Forgotten.)

(Robert Coover. A Sudden Story)

3) Graphical Foregrounding (SAO):

… On the yellow paper Toby had printed in red ink “PRAKING MISTEAK” and signed his name “TOBY” in a childish-looking hand. …

Toby wrote three slips: “TO MUSH SOMKING”, “TO MUSH DIRHKING”, “TOO MUSH YELING”. He placed the slips in the box. Then, before he put the box away, he wrote one more slip in his largest letters: “ERVYTHING WORNG!”. …

(Paul Milenski. Tickits)

The notion of “hindrances” comprises possible incompatibility of codes of a sender and a receiver, some changes in the transmission channel, etc. (other moments)

Proceeding from the scheme of conveying information, it becomes possible to define the difference between literary stylistics and linguistic stylistics. Literary stylistics and linguistic stylistics study signals, which are formed with the help of essentially different codes. Linguistic stylistics studies signals, which are formed by the first semiotic system — the human language. Literary stylistics studies signals, which are formed with the help of secondary semiotic system (code) — the language of literature, which has its own peculiarities.

Linguistic text investigations have the following paradigm.

1. Text as a packing material (modern structuralists, V. Propp.)

Language is primary, text is secondary. They believe that the only and simple interpretation of a text is possible. Text is a delimited articulated realization of speech, it is manifestation of the language structure. Text is technical packing material of information; the information should be extracted from the text by an addressee. The function of a text is to transmit information adequately.

2. Text as a generator of meanings. (M. Bakhtin, R. Jacobson).

Text is primary, language is secondary. Text interpretation is ambiguous. A lot of interpretations are possible. Augmentation of meaning in the process of text transformations is also possible. They believe that language as such possesses potential literary ability. That’s why a text is a lesson on language. Text function is creative.

3. Text as a condensator of cultural memory. (Yuri Lotman, M. Bakhtin).

Culture is primary, text is secondary. Text preserves memory about its previous contexts. Text creates semantic space (space of meanings). Text has ability to store information. Text memory consists of the sum of contexts, in which the given text acquires its meaning. Text like a bean (seed) contains in itself the programme of its future development.

4. Text as materialized knowledge (Cognitive Poetics).

Knowledge is primary, text is secondary. Text gives knowledge about the world, about the structure of a communication situation, and about the text itself.

Literary stylistics is not homogeneous, too. Depending on what is taken for the main aspect of analysis (an addresser, a signal or an addressee) – three types of literary stylistics are usually distinguished.

1. Stylistics from the author (Genetic Stylistics)

Problems, concerning the choice of the most appropriate language means and their organization into a message, from the view point of the addresser, are the center of attention of the individual style study.

It is represented by the school of logical analysis, the school of psychological analysis and the school of philological analysis by Leo Shpitzer. The stylistic analysis of this kind usually begins with the study of extratextual realities – the author’s biography, his world outlook, social, economic, political and other conditions of the time, in which the writer lived. Genetic stylistics studies all the factors which influenced the author’s creative activity.

It puts particular emphasis on the study of an individual author’s style, looking for correlations between the creative concepts of the author and the language of his work. In terms of information theory the author’s stylistics may be named the stylistics of the encoder: the language being viewed as the code to shape the information into the message and the supplier of the information as the encoder. The addressee in this case plays the part of decoder of the information contained in the message, and the problems connected with adequate decoding are the concern of decoding stylistics.

2. Stylistics from the reader (Stylistics of Perception, Decoding Stylistics)

It is represented by the linguistic analysis of Shcherba L., the stylistic analysis of M. Riffater, by the decoding stylistics of I. Arnold. Main task of this type of stylistics is to determine how a reader (an addressee) perceives and interprets a fiction text. The main task of the stylistic analysis is to investigate the addressee’s reaction, to examine what elements of a literary text appeared to be the most important and influential for the reader.

3. Structural stylistics (Immanent Stylistics)

This approach first appeared in the writings of Russian formalists at the beginning of the 20^th century. Now it is being developed in the works of English, American and French structuralists. Russian formalists believed that when a text is created, it becomes such a signal, which should be examined as some formal immanent structure independent from the author’s ideas or reader’s perception.

The most important concepts and categories of stylistics are the concepts of style, norm, context, stylistic or functional-stylistic meaning, expressive means (EM) and stylistic devices (SD).

First of all let’s try to define the notion of “style”.

It no news that any propositional content – any “idea” – can be verbalized in several different ways. So, “May I offer you a chair?”, “Take a seat, please ”, “Sit down” – have the same proposition but differ in the manner of expression, which depends upon the situational conditions of the communication act.

It is no surprise, then, that many linguists follow their famous French colleague Charles Bally, claiming that stylistics is primarily the study of synonymic language resources.

Representatives of the well-known Prague school – V. Mathesius, J. Havranek and others focused their attention on the priority of the situational appropriateness in the choice of language varieties for their adequate functioning. Thus, stylistics deals with “sets” , “paradigms”, of language units of all language levels serving to accommodate the needs of certain typified communicative situations. Proceeding from the famous definition of the style of a language offered by V.V. Vinogradov and from the definition of a functional style formulated by I.R. Galperin as “a system of coordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means intended to fulfill a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect”, we shall follow the understanding of the notion of style given by professor A.N. Morokhovsky which is based on Academician L. Stcherba’s differentiation of speech activity and product of speech activity.

Speech activity as any other human activity is conditioned by the human needs and aims, it always pursues achieving of some pragmatic effect. That’s why when we speak of human activity it’s necessary to differentiate means, or instruments of activity, and devices, or ways (manners) of activity. Both means and devices of activity have functional purposes.

So, if function expresses the purpose of an object or a way of activity, style expresses a property of an object or a way (manner) of activity.

It’s necessary to make difference between the style of speech activity and the style of the product of this activity. The style of speech activity is some socially adopted stereotype of speech behaviour. It appears, when a person chooses definite manner of behaviour in the limits of the generally accepted norms. This manner of behaviour carriers the information about the person – the information of his social role, his membership of this or that social group, of his character and psychological state at the moment of speech.

Definite manner of speech activity leads to the fact, that the product of this activity (utterances and texts) has definite semantic and structural peculiarities. In this case style – is the semantic property of an utterance or a text, which is a result of choice of definite number of devices for conveying the content.

Definite manner of speech activity is reflected in the product of this activity, which can be the distinctive feature of the language of the whole nation. In this case we may speak of the literary norm and the literary language. The literary norm of the national language is a set of language rules and habits accepted in the given society and in the given period of time. If style is the property of the activity and of the product of this activity, then the norm is such a style of the activity and its product, which is regarded to be the most regular and prestigious in this society.

The notion of context can be defined as the surroundings of a speech unit in which the properties of the unit are revealed (realized).

Proceeding from the given definition of a function as:

1. a relation of a speech unit (an utterance or a text) to the objective reality;

2. a relation of a speech unit to another unit in the structure of a speech unit of a higher level,

we have to differentiate two types of context: situational context and speech context.

Situational context is usually understood as the extralinguistic conditions in which the act of communication takes place.

Speech context can be subdivided into two types:

1. linguistic context

2. stylistic context.

Linguistic context is defined as the whole complex of definite (fixed) formal conditions, under which the meaning of the given language unit is revealed as the only possible meaning. Context can be lexical (the hand of the clock, to lend a hand, a fine hand at cooking, a piece for four hands), syntactical (I shall see your house; I shall see you to your house), lexical-syntactical, morphological-syntactical and mixed.

As for the size of a context, linguists usually speak of three types of it:

1. microcontext (such type of a context can be in the size of an utterance).

2. macrocontext (it is a paragraph or a dialogical unit).

3. megacontext (topical) (such type of a context is in the size of a chapter, some chapters, or even a whole story, novel).

Stylistic context is a piece of a text interrupted by the emergence of an element which is unpredictable, unexpected in its nature in respect to the given context, and the emergence (appearance) of this element creates a stylistic device.

E.g. That Longfellow chap most likely has written countless books of poetry.

(J. London)

The demonstrative pronoun “that” before the proper name “Longfellow” and the colloquial word “chap”, that are used in the context of the stylistically neutral units, create a stylistic device, and give the colloquial colouring to the whole utterance. So, a stylistic device is created not by the deviation from the literary norm, but by the deviation from the norm of the context.

Now let us compare the following words:

House Abode, dome (bookish) Cot (poetical) Hutch (colloq.) Crib (thievish) Hovel Hole Den

дім житло, резиденція оселя, пристановище хибара хаза, малина хатина, халупа нора, лігво барліг

дом жилище, резиденция обитель, приют хижина хаза, малина лачуга, хибарка нора, логово берлога

In all these cases each of the words forms a stylistic opposition to the neutral word “house”, because each of these words carries some additional information in respect to the word “house”. This additional meaning which points to the belonging of the word to the definite sphere of speech activity or to the definite style is called functional – stylistic meaning. The words having this additional meaning are stylistically marked. The fact of presence or absence of additional meaning allows to divide all the words of the English language into 3 groups: stylistically neutral words, which have no additional meaning and which don’t belong to the definite spheres of usage; and the words which carry some additional information. They can be subdivided into high-flown words and the low-flown words.

Language elements have potential ability to form classes or paradigms. So, paradigmatics is a set of relations between language elements of one level united by the associations of similarity. Sets of such elements – paradigms can be formed by the elements of any language level: by morphemes, lexemes, by sentence patterns or text patterns.

Paradigmatics realizes first of all the needs of the nominative function of language, that’s why the relations between the members of a paradigm are considered as oppositions, when a speaker chooses this or that element from a number of homo-functional elements.

An expressive means of any language level can be defined as a marked member of a stylistic or functional-stylistic opposition, which has the invariant or common meaning and belongs to the system of language. It is formed due to the paradigmatic relations.

Syntagmatics – is a set of linear relations between speech units of one level in the limits of the unit of a higher level (words in the limits of a sentence), united by the associations of contiguity. Syntagmatics realizes first of all the needs of the communicative function of language.

A stylistic device is formed in speech due to the syntagmatic relations; it appears between stylistically marked and stylistically unmarked (neutral) speech units or between only stylistically unmarked speech units due to the different ways of their combination.

Let’s try to compare the main characteristics (peculiarities) of an expressive means and a stylistic device.

Expressive Means (EM) EM can be language units of different levels, which are stylistically marked within the limits of the given language level. The given expressive means always has exactly this stylistic meaning. The given stylistic meaning is conditioned by the paradigmatic relations of the elements of one level.

A Stylistic Device (SD) Any SD appears due to the ways of combination of speech units of a lower level in the limits of a unit of a higher level. Stylistic meaning of a stylistic device arises (appears) in the context of some speech unit. Stylistic meaning is conditioned by the syntagmatic relations between the units of one or different levels.