Chapter One
Style and Stylistics
1.1 Introduction
e.g.(1)
“Take an egg, and make a perforation in the base and a corresponding one in the apex. And then, apply the lips to the aperture, and by forcibly inhaling the breath, the shell is entirely discharged of its contents.”
“It fair beats all how folks do things nowadays. When I was a gal, they made a hole in each end and sucked.”
e.g.(2)
(1) My beloved parent has joined the heavenly choir. (2) My dear father has passed away. (3) My father has died.
(4) My old man has kicked the bucket.
分析：
(1) My beloved parent has joined the heavenly choir.
(This sentence is very pompous and sententious, elevating the event of John Smith?s death to a divine status, probably said with respect in a poem or a formal ceremony, addressing an audience of high social status or nobility.) (2) My dear father has passed away.
（This sentence is still a bit formal, with sincere loving sentiment, expressing a kind of deep emotion fro his father’s death, addressing people of or above middle class status in a relatively formal occasion.） (3) My father has died.
(This sentence is a everyday kind of expression with no emotions revealed, said in an informal occasion, addressing his peers or friends. ) (4) My old man has kicked the bucket.
(This sentence is slangy, said in a very informal occasion showing disrespect for his father.)
e.g.(3)
(1) Expectoration is forbidden. (2) Please do not spit. (3) No spitting.
（The three sentences state the same fact that : spitting is not allowed, but, they are of different styles.）
e.g.(4) (参见教材P.4)
(1) When his dad died, Peter had to get another job. (2) After his father?s death, Peter had to change his job.
(3) On the decease of his father, Mr. Brown was obliged to seek alternative employment.
I.2 Definitions of Style
Some general senses of the word “style”:
(1) A person?s distinctive language habits, or the set of individual characteristics of language use.
e.g. Shakespeare?s style Hemingway?s style Henry James?s style Mark Twain?s style
(2) Style may refer to a set of collective characteristics of language use, i.e. language habits shared by a group of people at a given time. Here the concentration is not on the individual of the speaker or writer, but on their similarities in a given situation. e.g. Elizabethan style
the style of public speaking the style of news reporting
(3) Style mar refer to a characteristic of “good” or “beautiful” literary writings. e.g. ornate style , grand style terse style , lucid style plain style
(4) Style may refer to the effectiveness of a mode of expression, which is implied in the definition of style as ?saying the right thing in the most effective way? or ?good manners?, as a ?clear? or ?refined? style advocated in most books of composition.
Many different views of style from different scholars:
Le style, c?est I? homme meme. (Style is the man. )（Buffon） Style as form. （Aristotle）（form and content ） Style as eloquence.（Cicero）（skill to use language persuasively）（the relation with rhetoric） Style as personal idiosyncrasy.（Murry）
Saying the right thing in the most effective way.（Enkvist）
Style is a set of individual characteristics. It is the man himself. (Enkvist) Style as equivalence. （Roman Jacobson）（between form and function） Style as the choice between alternative expressions. （Enkvist） Style as deviation.（Mukarovsky & Spitzer） Style as foregrounding. （Leech Mukarovsky） Style as prominence.（Halliday）
Style is meaning potential. (Michael Halliday)
Style as the selections features partly determined by the demands of genre, form, themes, etc. （Traugott & Pratt）
Style as linguistic features that communicate emotions and thought.（Enkvist）(参见教材:P5-7)
Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics defines style as:
“the manner of expression in writing or speaking which changes at all times according to the actual situational elements, e.g., the participants, time, topic, etc. of the communicative event, from very formal to very informal.” (见教材P.5) The Definition of style used in the textbook:
Manner indicating prominent linguistic features, devices or patterns, most (or least) frequently occur in a particular text of a particular variety of language. (见教材P.7)
分析：
e.g. (After a quarrel between the two lovers)
With a flow of words, she started to argue with him, then she checked herself and said calmly, “Listen, John, I imagine you?re tired of my company. There?s no sense in having tea together. I think I?d better leave you right here.”
“That?s fine,” he said. “Good afternoon.” “Good-bye.”
总结：So broadly speaking, we can say that, from the perspective of the content, the events and activities described, style is saying different things in different ways; from the perspective of the ways of expression used, style is saying the same thing in different ways; from the perspective of the users of language, style is different speakers using language in different ways; and from the perspective of the function of the text, style is the functions of texts for different purposes.
1.3 Definitions of Stylistics
(1) Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which applies the theory and methodology of modern linguistics to the study of style.
(2) Stylistics is the study of varieties of language whose properties position that language in context. For example, the language of advertising, politics, religion, individual authors, etc., or the language of a period in time, all belong in a particular situation. In other words, they all have ?place?.
Stylistics also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialisation, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.
(3) Stylistics is a discipline that studies the ways in which language is used; it is a discipline that studies the styles of language in use.
(4) Stylistics is a linguistic approach to literature, explaining the relation between language and artistic function, with motivating questions such as “why” and “how” more than “what”.
---- G. N. Leech: Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry
(5) Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which studies the principles of choice and the effect of choice of different language elements in rendering thought and emotion under different conditions of communication. (I. R. Galperin)
(6) Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which studies style in a scientific and systematic way concerning the manners / linguistic features of different varieties of language at different levels. （见教材P8）
(7) Linguistics is the academic discipline that studies language scientifically, and stylistics, as a part of this discipline, studies certain aspects of language variation. ---- D. Crystal: Investigating English Style
(8) Stylistics “studies the features of situationally distinctive uses (varieties) of language, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language.” (Crystal, 1980)
分析：e.g. Housewife to milkman:
Which sentence is appropriate?
a. Can you leave one bottle and four yoghurts tomorrow please? b. Leave one bottle and four yoghurts tomorrow and don?t forget.
c. It would be greatly appreciated if you kindly leave one bottle and four yoghurts tomorrow. d. Would you leave one bottle and four yoghurts tomorrow, just for me.
1.4 The Development of Stylistics
Lead-in Questions:
What do you know about the stylistic studies in China? How does linguistic theories affect the studies on stylistics?
What do you know about the different schools of thoughts in stylistics?
In the West:
Modern stylistics got its development in the 19th and 20th centuries from rhetoric and from interpretation of literature.
Rhetoric (Aristotle)
Beginning (Charles Bally) Development (L. Spitzer)
Flourish (Investigating English Style)
总的来看，现代文体学是现代语言学理论与现代文学批评理论的基础之上发展起来的一种研究形态，并且处于进一步的发展之中。
In China:
The first period: from the founding of the People?s Republic of China to the year 1976; Wang Zuoliang(王佐良)： “On the Study of English Style” The second period: from 1977 up to the present time.
Achievements:
Introduction to English Stylistics---Wang zuoliang (1980) A Survey of Stylistics--- Qin Xiubai (1986); English Stylistics--- Cheng yumin (1989);
Stylistics—A coursebook for Chinese EFL Students--- Qian Yuan (1991) A Study of Narratology and Fictional Stylistics---Shen Dan (1998) Theoretical Stylistics--- Hu Zhuanglin (2000)
Essentials of English Stylistics--- Wang Shouyuan (2000) English Stylistics--- Xu Youzhi (2005)
A Survey of Stylistics--- Liu Shisheng (2006)
A large number of articles on stylistics got published. Founding of the Chinese Association of Rhetoric (1980) Founding of China Stylistics Association (2004)
International Stylistics Conference held in 2006 indicated the development and achievement of stylistics in China.
1.5 The Scope of Study
General Stylistics Literary Stylistics Theoretical Stylistics
? General stylistics studies different varieties of language. It concentrates on the general
features of various types of language use, including literary discourses and other practical styles.
? Literary Stylistics: Crystal (1987) observes that, in practice, most stylistic analysis has
attempted to deal with the complex and ?valued? language within literature, i.e. ?literary stylistics?.
Literary stylistics studies variations characteristic of different literary genres. It concentrates on the unique features of various literary works, such as poem, novel, prose, drama, etc., with the purpose of promoting literary texts as communicative acts.
The scope is sometimes narrowed to concentrate on the more striking features of literary language, for instance, its ?deviant? and abnormal features, rather than the broader structures that are found in whole texts or discourses.
For example, the compact language of poetry is more likely to reveal the secrets of its construction to the stylistician than is the language of plays and novels.
In Literary Stylistics, we read the text closely and with attention to the features, under the headings of lexis, grammar, phonology or sound patterns. When we have obtained a detailed account of all these features, we correlate them or bring them together in an interpretation of the text.
We try to link “what is being said ” with “how it is being said”, since it is through the latter that the writers can fully express the many complex ideas and feelings that they want to convey. ? Theoretical Stylistics studies the theories, the origins, the trend, and the historical
development of stylistics as well as characteristics of different branches of stylistics. It also studies the relationship between stylistics and other branches of learning.
1.6 The Need for Stylistic Study
（1）Style is an integral part of meaning.
Without the sense of style we cannot arrive at a better understanding of an utterance. 分析：
e.g. Policeman: What?s your name, boy? Black psychiatrist: Dr Poussaint. I?m a physician. Policeman: What?s your first name, boy? Black psychiatrist: Alvin.
（2）Stylistic study helps cultivate a sense of appropriateness * Who speaks what language to whom and when.
* Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style. -- Swift
First, a certain style is determined by the characteristics of the USER of language, such as the age, sex, education, socio-regional or ethnic background.
Second, it?s related to the characteristics of the USE of language in situation:
英语文体学
