Linguistics | What is Stylistic?

Linguistics Stylistics

What is Stylistic?

  

  Stylistics is a system of textual interpretation in which supremacy of place is assigned to language. The term " textbook " has been used in the stylistic literature rather approximately to cover a wide range of verbal/ digressive units that can be as varied as a lyric, a novel, a public speech and indeed a casual phone converse or a joke. 

Stylistic analysis, therefore defined, has been questioned by some linguists, on the grounds that its subject- matter isn't well defined or indeed null since all the verbal aspects of language are formerly studied by other well established verbal disciplines.  

  Read runners 2 and 3 of RB where you'll find a discussion on how an ultramodern linguist, Lecercle (1993), attacked the styles of Stylistics, claiming that Stylistics is “ailing” and “on the wane”. What's Lercercle’s focus on his attack? How does the pen of the RB respond to similar attack? Check the RB’s Bibliography and say which of Lecercle’s book the RB’s pen is pertaining to. 

  Read pages 2 and 3 of RB where you will find a discussion on how a modern linguist, Lecercle  (1993), attacked the methods of Stylistics, claiming that Stylistics is "on the wane" and " ailing". What is Lercercle’s focus on his attack? How does the writer of the RB respond to such attack? Check the RB’s Bibliography and say which of Lecercle’s book the RB’s writer is referring to.

  While Linguistics focuses on Language as such, Stylistics explores the creative aspects of Language, hence the tendency of stylisticians’ to favor genres showing literary creativity. There is a sense in which Stylistics stands on the borderlines between Linguistics, in as much as it’s a tool of exploring Language, and Literary Criticism, in as much as it judges the innovative art in breathed in the texts to be studied.

  Phenomena cherished by stylistics such as metaphors, metric structures, and narration are “purely” linguistic phenomena since they can all be accounted for in linguistic terms: metaphors can be explained in terms of what we know about word meaning and use (typically studied by Semantics and Pragmatic), poetic meters can be explained in terms of what we know about stress patterns (typically studied by. Phonology), and narration can be explained in terms of what we know about the structure of texts and conversations (typically studied by Text Analysis and Discourse Analysis).

 Stylistics is a “man” walking with two legs- a linguistic leg and a literary leg. To see how this questionable but defensible “double function” works, let us consider a rather simple example of a playful pun by G. K. Chesterton, who has understandably been known as the "prince of paradox"

1.    The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a woman were to shoot her grandfather at a range of four hundred meters, I should call her a good shot, but not necessarily a good woman 

 In text 1, Chesterton successfully highlights the “paradox” of how we use the meaning of the adjective “good”: It can either describe a certain aspect or quality of something we own, a person’s skill of shooting in the expression “a good shot”, or an inner quality representing what a person is, the woman's moral character in the expression “a good woman”. A good lexicographer.

 (i.e. a compiler, editor and writer of a dictionary.)  Should be able to include in his definition of the adjective “good” that it does not only modify the noun with which it is used (i.e. “a woman” in our example) but also some specific aspect or quality of what that Noun is intended to represent (i.e. “a woman’s moral character” in our example.)

  Chesterton’s pun has an effect. It can make the recipient laugh, smile or simply quietly appreciate the playful use of the word “good” without even thinking about the underpinning linguistic mechanism.

   A linguist may be interested in describing and explaining the multiple meanings of the Adjective “good” and how this sematic multiplicity contributes to the generation of various meaning structures. While embracing the linguist’s account, a stylistician wants to “go beyond” a mere observation about a meaning relationship.

  (i.e. that of meaning multiplicity in our case) by both recognizing and trying to explain the creative utilization of such meaning multiplicity in a specific context (i.e. to highlight two extremely different ways of using the adjective “good”) to induce a psychological effect (i.e. laughter, a smile, a quiet appreciation, etc.).