метафора стилистика прагматика / Linguistic Stylistics - Gabriela Missikova part 1

Chapter 1:

STYLISTICS AND STYLE: A HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVE AND RECENT TRENDS

1.1Ancient Times

In ancient Greece the use of language can be seen mainly as an effort to create speeches. Thus we may recognise a practical function of language in political and judicial speeches, and an aesthetic function in ceremonial ones. The art of creating speech was called Rhetoric (from the Greek techne rhetorike) and was taught as one of the main subjects in schools. The aim was to train speakers to create effective and attractive speeches. Another language activity was the creation of poetic works. The process of artistic creation was called Poetics. Its aim was to study a piece of art, and, unlike rhetoric, it focused on the problems of expressing the ideas before the actual moment of utterance. The work of Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.) entitled Poetics is considered to be a pioneer publication in this field. His distinction of epics, drama and lyrics within artistic works is still applicable. The third field of language use was the art of creating a dialogue. The study of creating and guiding a dialogue, talk or discussion, as well as the study of methods of persuasion, was called Dialectics. The “dialogue technique” as one of the most convenient and efficient form of exchanging experiences and presenting research results was introduced and supported by Socrates. This method is still known in pedagogy as the “dialogical” or “Socrates’ method”.

The further development of Stylistics was based on the three above mentioned sources from which Poetics went its own way and created the field of study known at present as Literary Criticism. Rhetoric and Dialectics developed into Stylistics.

The development of Stylistics in ancient Rome, that is about 300 years later, brought the distinction of two different styles in speech represented by Caesar and Cicero. Their main characteristics are summarised in the following table:

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1.2The Middle Ages

Latin was exclusively used as the language of science, art and administration, and no attempts were made to deal with problems of speech. This period shows no progress in the development of stylistics. An anomalistic rhetoric of Cicero became a model way of public speaking, which means that aesthetically attractive speeches were popular. They enabled speakers to develop their individual styles. However, the influence of ancient India brought about a tendency to make speeches brief in the case of a sufficient amount of data and facts being available to a speaker. This tendency to economise the speech intentionally enhanced the distinction between the FORM and CONTENT.

The language of science, culture and administration was very different from the language of common people. However, it would be inappropriate to speak about styles at this stage. It was the same language (and the same style) but, of course, different phrases, clichés and stereotyped bookish Latin formulas were used in each sphere. The most apparent differences occurred in terminology.

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1.3The New Age

On the one hand there were the traditions of Cicero and Aristotle, on the other, new theories of style have developed: individualist, emotionalist, formalist, functionalist, etc.

In the era of Romanticism the notion and term style referred exclusively to the written form of language (from Gr. stylos = a carver, an instrument for writing). Spoken language was the main subject of rhetoric.

The most impressive work from this period is the book L'Art poétique (1674) written by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, which became the bible of French poets of the 17th and 18th century. This book includes explanations of prose, poetry and drama, and is considered an unusual guidebook for poets and other artists. At the same time it is not limited to poetics, several definitions are of a stylistic character or even more general (e.g. ... those pieces of information which are not new should be pronounced without any special stress or accent, expressions should not be unnecessarily extended, borrowed and loan words should be avoided and special attention should be paid to the selection of a title, etc.) In general, the book is based on the poetics of Aristotle and Horatio. The three different styles are mentioned, their distinction being based on the opposition of language and parole first mentioned by Cicero (and later elaborated, quite independently, by Ferdinand de Saussure).

The French classical theory of styles requested the usage of a high (grand) style in all verbal works of art as an opposite to the everyday communication of common people in which the middle and low (plain) styles were used. The styles were classified as 1. stylus altus (works of art), 2. stylus mediocris (the style of high society) and 3. stylus humilis (the style of low society but could be used in comedies). This theory reflects preliminary attempts to describe the notion of style as based primarily on the selection of expressive means.

At the beginning of the 19th century a German linguist and philosopher, Wilhelm von Humboldt described functional styles in his book “Űber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss...” and treated poetry and prose (colloquial, educational and belles-letters prose) as opposites: poetry and prose differ in the selection of expressive means, i.e. words and expressions, use of grammatical forms, syntactic structures, emotional tones, etc. Humboldt's ideas appeared quite intriguing, however, and since his classification of styles was not based on and supported by any linguistic analyses of text samples, it remained idealistic. Later on, many linguists returned to and elaborated on his ideas, among others, the most influential were the members of the Prague Linguistic Circle (1926), V. Mathesius, B. Havránek and F. Trávníček.

Some literary schools have also contributed towards the development of stylistics. The French school Explication de Texte developed a method of text analysis and interpretation which is known as close reading. This method was based on a correlation of historical and linguistic information and on seeking connections between aesthetic responses and specific stimuli in the text. The method became quite popular and was used by many other schools and movements.

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1.3.1The 20th Century: Linguistic Schools and Conceptions before Ferdinand de Saussure

At the beginning of the 20th century a group of German linguists, B. Croce, K. Vossler and L. Spitzer, represented the school of the New Idealists. Their approach is known as individualistic or psychoanalytical because its main aim was to search for individual peculiarities of language as elements of expressing a psychological state of mind (in German “Seelische Meinung”). B. Croce regarded language as a creation and thus suggested viewing linguistics as a subdepartment of aesthetics. Karl Vossler was known for looking for clues to national cultures behind linguistic details and Leo Spitzer for tracing parallels between culture and expression. His working method became famous as the Spitzerian circle. However, the German school of individualists and psychoanalysts belongs to the past and there are no followers anymore.

The origin of the new era of linguistic stylistics is represented by the linguistic emotionalistic conception of the French School of Charles Bally. Ch. Bally worked under the supervision of Ferdinand de Saussure in Geneva and after Saussure’s death published his work: Cours de linguistique générale (1916). Bally’s own concept of stylistics is classified as emotionally expressive because of his strong belief that each particular component of linguistic information combines a part of language and a part of a man who interprets or announces the information.

While at the beginning of the 20th century the Romance countries were mainly influenced by Bally’s expressive stylistics and Germany by Croce’s individual stylistics, a new linguistic and literary movement developed in Russia and became known as formalism. The Russian Formalists introduced a new, highly focused and solid method of literary and linguistic analysis. Formal method used in linguistics was based on the analytical view of the form, the content of a literary work was seen as a sum of its stylistic methods. In this way, the formal characteristics of a literary work are seen in opposition to its content. In other words, the focus was on ‘devices of artistry’ not on content (i.e. HOW not WHAT). The formalists originated as an opposition to a synthesis introduced by the symbolists. The development follows from synthesis towards analysis, putting the main emphasis on the form, material, or ‚skill‘. The main representative was Roman O. Jakobson; others were J. N. Tynjanov and V. V. Vinogradov. Russian formalism originated in 1916, flourished in 1920 – 1923, and had practically ceased to exist by the end of the 20’s. In spite of the short, about tenyear, existence of Russian formalism, many ideas were modified and further elaborated. They became part of structuralism, and can also be found in the works of the members of the Prague School ten years later.

The crucial question of the movement known as Structuralism is What is language and what is its organisation like? The main ideas of structuralism are presented in its fundamental work Cours de linguistique générale written by F. de Saussure (1856 – 1913) and published posthumously by his student Ch. Bally in 1916. The ideas of Structuralism penetrated not only into linguistics and literary criticism, but also into ethnography, folklore studies, aesthetics, history of arts, drama and theatre studies, etc.

The program and methodology of work of the Prague Linguistic Circle (1926) were truly structuralistic. They introduced systematic application of the term

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structuralism, which brought about new phenomena introduced into linguistics and literary study. Its influence on stylistics was crucial. The main aspects of the movement can be summarised as follows:

¾distinction between the aesthetic function of poetic language and the practical, communicative function of language;

¾language is seen as a structure, supra-temporal and supra-spatial, given inherently (in the sense of Saussure´s language);

¾literary work is an independent structure related to the situation of its origin/ creation;

¾individual parts of literary or linguistic structure are always to be understood from the point of view of a complex structure;

¾the analyses of particular works were based on language analysis because it was assumed that in a literary work all components (i.e. language, content, composition) are closely inter-related and overlapping within the structure.

The founders and main representatives of the Prague Linguistic Circle were R. O. Jakobson, N. S. Trubeckoj, V. Mathesius, J. Mukařovský. Among others were also B. Trnka, B. Havránek, J. Vachek, K. Hausenblas and F. X. Šalda. Another structuralistic school originated in Copenhagen, Denmark represented by J. Hjelmslev, and in the U.S. represented by E. Sapir and L. Bloomfield.

1.4Recent Development: Stylistics in the United Kingdom

At the time when structuralism was at its most influential in Czechoslovakia, Denmark and the USA, the school known as The New Criticism originated in Cambridge, Great Britain.

The main representatives were I. A. Richards and W. Empson, who introduced new terms, mainly the method of structural analysis called close reading. They devoted great effort to the study of metaphor and introduced the terms tenor and vehicle which are still in use. The New Criticism represents progress in stylistic thinking and their theory is valid even today. They also have followers in the USA. (e.g. C. Brooks, R. P. Blackmur, R. P. Warren).

British stylistics is influenced by M. Halliday (1960’s) and his structuralist approach to the linguistic analysis of literary texts. British tradition has always been the semiotics of text – context relationships and structural analysis of text: locating literature into a broader social context and to other texts. British Stylistics and Linguistic Criticism reached its most influential point at the end of the 70s (Kress, Hodge: Language as Ideology, 1979; Fowler, R. et al: Language and Control, 1979, Aers, et al.: Literature, Language and Society in England 1580-1680, 1981). All three books used transformational and systemic linguistics, an overtly structuralist and Marxist theoretical approach to the analysis of literary texts. Two years later Roger Fowler published a book signalling new directions in British Stylistics and marking its transition to Social Semiotics (Fowler, R.: Literature as Social Discourse: The

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Practice of Linguistic Criticism, 1981). Fowler’s book brings together British works (Halliday) with those of Barthes, Bakhtin and others of European traditions.

Romance, English and American stylistics are based on observation and analysis of literary works (texts) and are very close to poetics. The original American tradition is based on practical methods of creating various texts, there is a school subject called creative writing and composition which is very often identified with stylistics.

The field of study of stylistics in Slovakia is understood as more independent from poetics than the British tradition, but also very different from the American tradition (more theoretical, academic, e.g. F. Miko, J. Mistrík, T. Žilka, etc.).

It is necessary to mention a contribution of Czech stylistics here, namely in the field of the classification of styles. The Czech linguist, B. Havránek, one of the representatives of the Prague Linguistic Circle, introduced the notion of functional styles based on the classification of language functions. According to B. Havránek the language functions are: 1. communicative, 2. practical professional, 3. theoretical professional and 4. aesthetic function. The first three functions are informative and the fourth one is aesthetic. This system of functions is reflected in the classification of styles in the following way: 1. colloquial (conversational) style, 2. professional (factual) style, 3. scientific style, 4. poetic (literary) style.

In the 1970’s larger structures of texts and networks of relations within which they circulate were studied, and recourses to Hallidayan linguistics, register and genre theory became influential. Typical representatives are Ronald Carter and Roger Fowler.

Among the latest tendencies there is the interesting approach of textual Stylistics which originated in Anglo-Saxon countries (Halliday: Cohesion in English, London 1976; Turner: Stylistics, Penguin Books, 1973) and from American centres of stylistic studies the Indiana University of Bloomington should be mentioned (Style in Language, 1958).

In the 1990’s two journals which map recent development have to be mentioned: Language and Literature (first published in Great Britain, 1992) and Social Semiotics (first published in Australia, 1991).

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Chapter 2:

MAIN CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

2.1The Scope of Stylistic Study

Stylistics is traditionally regarded as a field of study where the methods of selecting and implementing linguistic, extra-linguistic or artistic expressive means and devices in the process of communication are studied (e.g. Mistrík, 1985). In general, we distinguish linguistic stylistics and literary (poetic) stylistics. The division between the two is by no means easy or clear. In his book Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose Mick Short comments on this problem like this:

“... stylistics can sometimes look like either linguistics or literary criticism, depending upon where you are standing when looking at it. So, some of my literary critical colleagues sometimes accuse me of being an unfeeling linguist, saying that my analyses of poems, say, are too analytical, being too full of linguistic jargon and leaving unsufficient room for personal preference on the part of the reader. My linguist colleagues, on the other hand, sometimes say that I‘m no linguist at all, but a critic in disguise, who cannot make his descriptions of language precise enough to count as real linguistics. They think that I leave too much to intuition and that I am not analytical enough. I think I‘ve got the mix just right, of course!”

(Short, 1996, p. 1)

Mick Short is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language at Lancaster University and a leading authority in the field of stylistics. The above-mentioned book provides a clear and broad ranging introduction to stylistic analysis including a comprehensive discussion of the links between linguistics and literary criticism. Short’s standpoint is a linguistic one and his analytical methods are perfectly up-to-date. He works exclusively with literary texts; texts of poetry, fiction and drama and consequently his analyses include a considerable amount of (literary) interpretation and discussion of literary issues. In other words, he is interested not only in the (linguistic) forms of the analysed texts (i.e. HOW), but he also studies the meaning (i.e. WHAT) of the text in the sense of a plot and an overall meaning/message of a story.

For our purposes, it is crucial to understand that there are different traditions of stylistic research (e.g. Slovak versus British and American traditions) which influence the limits and ambitions of stylistic study as well as the methods used in stylistic analysis. Of course, modern developments and tendencies towards an interdisciplinary research have to be taken into account.

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There are many problems that have fascinated scholars working at the interface between language and literature: What is literature? How does literary discourse differ from other discourse types? What is style? What is the relationship between language, literature and society? Within the last 40 years scholars have introduced various approaches, summarised and discussed in detail in the book edited by Jean Jacques Weber: The Stylistics Reader. From Roman Jakobson to the present (1996). These are mainly:

•formalist stylistics represented by Roman Jakobson,

•functionalist stylistics represented by Michael Halliday,

•affective stylistics introduced by Stanley E. Fish and Michael Toolan,

•pedagogical stylistics elaborated by H. G. Widowson, Ronald Carter and Paul Simpson.

Other currents in contemporary stylistics are different types of contextualized stylistics, for instance:

•pragmatic stylistics represented by recent works of Mick Short, Mary Louise Pratt and Peter Verdonk,

•critical stylistics represented mainly by Roger Fowler and David Birch,

•feminist stylistics introduced by Deirdre Burton and Sara Mills, and

•cognitive stylistics represented by Donald C. Freeman, Dan Sperber, Deirdre Burton and others.

We shall discuss some of the most influential approaches later on in this chapter.

2.2The Notion of Language and Literary Style

According to J. Mistrík (1985) stylistics can be defined as the study of choice and the types of use of linguistic, extra-linguistic and aesthetic mean, as well as particular techniques used in communication. Considering the generally accepted differentiation between linguistic and literary stylistics, J. Mistrík suggests that we carefully distinguish between the language style, belles-lettres and literary style (ibid., p. 30):

The language style is a way of speech and/or a kind of utterance which is formed by means of conscious and intentional selection, systematic patterning and implementation of linguistic and extra-linguistic means with respect to the topic, situation, function, author's intention and content of an utterance.

The Belles-Letters style (artistic, aesthetic, in Slovak umelecký štýl) is one of the language styles which fulfils, in addition to its general informative function, a specific aesthetic function.

The Literary Style is the style of literary works implemented in all components of a literary work, i.e. on the level of language, ideas, plot, etc. All these components are subordinated to aesthetic norms. (Thus Literary style is an extra-linguistic

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category while the language and belles-letters styles are language categories.) We can recognise the style of a literary school, group or generation and also an individual style of an author (i.e. idiolect). This means that on the one hand we can name the socalled individual styles and on the other the inter-individual (functional) styles.

Traditionally recognised functional styles are 1. rhetoric (persuasive function), 2. publicistic (informative function – to announce things) and 3. scientific (educational function). Functional styles can be classified as subjective (colloquial and aesthetic) and objective (administrative and scientific). We shall discuss more details on particular styles and their classification in Chapter 12 (Mistrík, ibid., p. 31).

2.3Stylistic Analysis and Literary Interpretation

In his work on (Slovak) stylistics J. Mistrík draws clear boundaries between stylistic analysis and literary interpretation (ibid., p. 31):

He defines stylistic or text analysis as a procedure which aims at the linguistic means and devices of a given text, the message, topic and content of analysed texts are not the focus. The method of stylistic analysis can be equally applied to the study of language use in literary as well as non-literary texts.

From this point of view literary interpretation is a process which applies exclusively to literary texts, it aims at understanding and interpreting the topic, content and the message of a literary work, its literary qualities and the so called decoding of the author's signals by the recipient.

2.4Definitions of Style

The understanding of the term style influences the characteristics given to Stylistics as one of several linguistic disciplines. The following are the most common characteristics of style as listed by K. Wales in her respected work A Dictionary of Stylistics (1990):

Although the term style is used very frequently in Literary Criticism and especially Stylistics, it is very difficult to define. There are several broad areas in which it is used:

(1)At its simplest, style refers to the manner of expression in writing and speaking, just as there is a manner of doing things, like playing squash or painting. We might talk of someone writing in an ornate style, or speaking in a comic style. For some people style has evaluative connotations: style can be good or bad.

(2)One obvious implication of (1) is that there are different styles in different situations (e.g. comic vs. turgid); also that the same activity can produce stylistic variation (no two people will have the same style in playing squash or writing an essay). So style can be seen as variation in language use, whether literary or nonliterary. The term register is commonly used for those systemic variations in linguistic features common to particular non-literary situations, e.g. advertising, legal language, sports commentary.

Style may vary not only from situation to situation but according to medium and

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degree of formality: what is sometimes termed style-shifting. On a larger scale it may vary, in literary language, from one genre to another, or from one period to another (e.g. we may talk of the style of Augustan poetry, etc.) Style is thus seen against a background of larger or smaller domains or contexts.

(3)In each case, style is seen as distinctive: in essence, the set or sum of linguistic features that seem to be characteristic: whether of register, genre or period, etc. Style is very commonly defined in this way, especially at the level of text: e.g. the style of Keat’s Ode to a Nightingale, or of Jane Austen’s Emma.

Stylistic features are basically features of language, so style is in one sense synonymous with language (i.e. we can speak equally of the language of Ode to a Nightingale). What is implied, however, is that the language is in some way distinctive, significant for the design of a theme, for example. When applied to the domain of an author, style is the set of features peculiar to, or characteristic of an author: his or her language habits or idiolect. So we speak of Miltonic style, or Johnsonese.

(4)Clearly each author draws upon the general stock of the language in any given period; what makes style distinctive is the choice of items, and their distribution and patterning. A definition of style in terms of choice is very popular, the selection of features partly determined by the demands of genre, form, theme, etc. All utterances have a style, even when they might seem relatively plain or unmarked: a plain style is itself a style.

(5)Another differential approach to style is to compare one set of features with another in terms of a deviation from a norm, a common approach in the 1960’s. It would be wrong to imply that style itself is deviant in the sense of abnormal, even though there are marked poetic idiolects. Rather, we match any text or piece of language against the linguistic norms of its genre, or its period, and the common core of the language as a whole. Different texts will reveal different patterns of dominant or foregrounded features.

2.5Definitions of Stylistics

Stylistics is the study of style. Just as style can be viewed in several ways, so

there are several different stylistic approaches. This variety in stylistics is due to the main influences of Linguistics and Literary Criticism.

Stylistics in the twentieth century replaces and expands on the earlier discipline known as rhetoric. Following the publication of a two-volume treatise on French stylistics by Ch. Bally (1909), a pupil of the structuralist, F. de Saussure, interest in stylistics gradually spread across Europe via the work of L. Spitzer and others. It was in the 1960s that it really began to flourish in Britain and the United States. Traditional literary critics were suspicious of an objective approach to literary texts.

In many respects, stylistics is close to literary criticism and practical criticism. By far the most common kind of material studied is literary, and attention is textcentred. The goal of most stylistic studies is not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake, but to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text; or to relate literary effects to linguistic causes where these

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