1. General information about style and Stylistics
The term “stylistics” originated from Latin stilus (the name of the writing-rod/stick for scratching letters on wax-covered tablets) or Greek stylos (which means a “pen”).
Now the word ‘style’ means something that belongs exclusively to the plane of expression and not to the plane of content.
The term stylistics for a new discipline studying the expressive qualities of language is in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1882. Now Stylistics is a branch of general linguistics. It deals mainly with two tasks:
- the investigation of special language media which secure the desirable effect of the utterance;
- the investigation of certain types of texts which are distinguished due to the choice and arrangement of language means.
The style of a writer can be ascertained only by analysis of the form, i.e. language media.
Language media:
composition of larger-than-the-sentence units;
rhythm and melody utterances;
system of imagery;
preferences for definite stylistic devices and their correlation with neutral media;
interdependence of the language media employed by the author and the media characteristic of the personages.
Language means mirror the vibration of extra-linguistic reality. According to the observation of many literary critics, the style of modern literary works is much more excited than that of Dickens, Thackeray, Galsworthy. The language of some ultra-modern writers to some extent reflects the rapidly increasing tempo of the present industrial and technical revolution.
So the style is appropriate to the context in which it occurs. Context is especially important in case with polysemantic words. There are several types of context. Microcontext is the context of a single utterance (sentence). Macrocontext is the context of a paragraph in a text. Megacontext is the context of a book chapter, a story or the whole book.
2. Level of phonemes and graphemes
Onomatopoeia is the use of words that imitate the sounds of an object or action: ‘hiss, ‘murmur’. In poetry the leading role belongs to alliteration (repetition of consonants, usually in the beginning of words) and assonance (repetition of similar vowels, usually in stressed syllables).
They both may produce the effect of euphony (a sense of ease and comfort in pronouncing or hearing) or cacophony (a sense of strain and discomfort in pronouncing or hearing).
As an example of the first may serve the famous lines of E.A.Poe:
… silken sad uncertain
rusting of each purple curtain…
An example of the second is provided by the unspeakable combination of sounds found in R.Browning: Nor soul helps flesh now more than flesh helps soul.
The intentional violation of the graphical shape of a word (or word combination) used to reflect its authentic pronunciation is called graphon. It was introduced into English novels and journalism in the beginning of the 18th century.
“The b-b-b-b-bas-tud he seen me c-c-c-c-coming” in R.P.Warren’s Sugar Boy’s speech or “You don’t mean to thay that thith ith your firth time” (D.C.) show the physical defects of the speakers: the stumbling of one and the lisping of the other.
Some amalgamated forms, which are the result of strong assimilation, became clichés in contemporary prose dialogue: ‘gimme’ (give me), ‘lemme’ (let me), ‘gonna’ (going to), ‘gotta’ (got to), ‘coupla’ (couple of), ‘mights’ (might have), ‘willya’ (will you), etc.
To purely graphical means we should refer all changes of the type (italics, capitalization (HELP), spacing of graphemes (hyphenation (chim-pan-zee), multiplication (Alllll aboarrrrrrd)) and of lines (V.Mayakovsky).