2. Individual style and Idiolect

Individual style is a unique combination of l-ge units, expressive means (EM) and syntactical devices (SD) peculiar to a given writer, which makes that writer's works or even utterances easily recognizable. Ind St requires to be studied in stylistics as it makes use of the potentialities of l-ge means. Of course each author's style should be analysed separately, which is naturally impossible in a book on general stylistics. Deliberate choice of l-ge and the ways the chosen elements are treated - are the main distinctive features of individual style. The treatment of the selected elements brings up the problem of norm. The Norm should be regarded as the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical & syntactical patterns circulating in l-ge-in-action at a given period of time. Variants of these patterns may sometimes diverge from the invariant but they never exceed the limits set by the invariant, otherwise it should become unrecognizable or misleading. The development of any literary l-ge shows that the variants will always centre around the axis of the invariant forms. The variants, as the term itself suggests, will never detach themselves from the invariant to such a degree as to claim entire independence. Yet, nevertheless, there is a tendency to estimate the value of individual style by the degree it violates the norms of the l-ge.

In linguistics, an idiolect is an individual's distinctive and unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

Idiolect is the variety of language unique to an individual. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among some group of people. The notion of language is used as an abstract description of the language use, and of the abilities of individual speakers and listeners. According to this view, a language is an "ensemble of idiolects . . . rather than an entity per se." Linguists study particular languages, such as English by examining the utterances produced by the people who speak the language.

Linguists who understand particular languages as a composite of unique, individual idiolects must nonetheless account for the fact that members of large speech communities, and even speakers of different dialects of the same language, can understand one another. All human beings seem to produce language in essentially the same way. This has led to searches for universal grammar, as well as attempts to further define the nature of particular languages.

The word “style” is derived from the Latin word “stilus” which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tables.

Now the word ‘style’ is used in so many senses that it has become ambiguous. It is used to reveal the correspondence between thought and expression; it frequently denotes an individual manner of making use of language. Some linguists consider that “style” and Stylistics are confined to the study of the effects of the message, the impact on the reader.

The term “style”, being ambiguous, needs a restricting adjective to denote what particular aspect of style is meant. Individual style should be applied to the peculiarities of a writer’s individual manner of using language means to achieve the effect he desires (the language of Dickens, the language of Dostoevsky, etc.) The individual style of a writer is marked by its uniqueness. It can be recognized by the specific and peculiar combination of language media and stylistic devices which in their interaction present a certain system.

Deliberate choice of language means characteristic of the individual author’s style should be distinguished from a habitual idiosyncrasy (отличит. особенность) in the use of language. Every individual has his own manner and habits of using language means. The speech of an individual is called idiolect. Idiolect is characterized by inherited qualities and acquired features (приобретенные особенности) due to upbringing, education, social standing.

The use of the linguistic means either in the individual style or in idiolect brings about the problem of the norm. The notion of the norm mainly refers to the literary language and always presupposes a recognized or received standard. The norm makes it possible to distinguish between “correct” and “incorrect” employment of the language.

There are different norms (orthoepic, word-building, syntactic, graphic, etc.). For Stylistics it is essential that the norms of the spoken and written varieties of language differ in more than one respect.

The fact that there are different norms does not exclude the possibility and necessity of arriving at some abstract notion of norm which is usually named invariant, which should embrace all variants with their most typical properties.

The norm should be regarded as the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns circulating in language at given period of time.

Variants of these patterns may sometimes diverge from the invariant but they never exceed the limits set by the invariant lest it should become unrecognizable or misleading. The development of any literary language shows that the variants always center on the axis of the invariant forms.

Another important point is to differentiate between language-as-a-system (language) and language –in-action (speech).

All rules and patterns of language which are collected and classified in works on grammar, phonetics, lexicology, stylistics first appear in language-in-action (speech). As soon as they generalized and framed as rules and patterns they illustrate language-as-a-system (language).