Stylistics

STYLISTICS
TOOLS/PRINCIPLES
1. What is stylistics?
2. Stylistics and levels of language
3. Grammar and style
4. Rhythm and metre
5. Narrative stylistics
6. Style as choice
7. Style and point of view
8. Representing speech and thought
9. Dialogue and discourse
10. Cognitive stylistics
11. Metaphor and metonymy
12. Stylistics and verbal humour
DEVELOPMENT
2. Levels of language at work: an example from poetry
3. Sentence styles: development and illustration
4. Interpreting patterns of sound
5. Developments in structural narratology
6. Style and transitivity
7. Approaches to point of view
8. Techniques of speech and thought presentation
9. Dialogue in drama
10. Developments in cognitive stylistics
11. Styles of metaphor
EXPLORATION
1. Is there a ‘literary language’?
2. Style, register and dialect
3. Grammar and genre: a short study in Imagism
4. Styles in a single poem: an exploration
5. A sociolinguistic model of narrative
6. Transitivity, characterization and literary genre
7. Exploring point of view in narrative fiction
8. A workshop on speech and thought presentation
9. Exploring dialogue
10. Cognitive stylistics at work
11. Exploring metaphors in different kinds of texts
EXTENSION
1. Language and literature (Roger Fowler and F. W. Bateson)
2. Style and verbal play (Katie Wales)
3. Teaching grammar and style (Ronald Carter)
4. Sound, style and onomatopoeia (Derek Attridge)
5. Style variation in narrative (Mick Short)
6. Transitivity at work (Deirdre Burton)
7. Point of view
8. Speech and thought presentation
9. Literature as discourse (Mary Louise Pratt)
10. Cognitive stylistics (Margaret Freeman)
11. Cognitive stylistics and the theory of metaphor (Peter Stockwell)
1. WHAT IS STYLISTICS?
- various definitions of stylistics
- development and history
- branches
- purpose of stylistics
- stylistics in teaching language and literature
2. STYLISTICS AND LEVELS OF LANGUAGE

- methodological significance of the three Rs
- levels and units of analysis in language that can help organise and shape a stylistic
analysis
- Levels of language (branches of language study)
- That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
 Levels of language  Mood  Discourse context
 Graphetic  Superordinate  Discourse function
substance  Deixis  Discourse strategy
 Phonetic  Referents  Interlocutor
substance  Distal  Interconnectednes
 Graphemes  Proximal s of levels and
 Phonetic  Discourse: context- layers
environment sensitive  No ‘natural’ starting
 Regional difference  Inferencing point
 Lexico-grammar strategies  circumspect
- You are the sun

in reverse, all energy
flows into you . . .
(Atwood 1996: 47)
 engendered  Metaphorical  Lines
 Lyric poem construction  ‘Anti-lyric’
 Short  Element of nature  Subject of the
introspective text  Linguistic trompe direct address
 Single speaking l’oeil (Fr. Deceive  Disintegrate,
voice the eye) displaced
 ‘love poem’  Grammatical  Grammatical
manifestation complement revision
3. GRAMMAR AND STYLE

- this unit tries to develop some useful building blocks for a study of grammar and style.
- Interlocking categories, units and structures (rules)
- Rules of grammar and genuine grammatical rules of language
- Building blocks for a study of grammar and style
- Basic model of grammar
- Rank scale (S, C, P, W, M)
- Clause – SITE of functions of language, tense, polarity, core or ‘nub’ of a
proposition, grammatical mood
- SPCA and configuration (ellipsis)
- Tests for clause constituents: (WH question, tag question, Hiberno-English emphatic
tag)
- Sentence types (page 59-66)
- Variations in basic clause structure (SPCA, SPAAAA pattern, ‘P-less’ structures, a
type of grammatical abbreviation known as ellipsis, minor clause (important locus
for stylistic experimentation), a general rule of thumb, when analyzing elements
which are present in a text, there can only be one Subject element and one
Predicator element of structure in any given clause. There may however be up to
two Complement elements and any number of Adjunct elements.
- grammatical patterning, equivalent constituents, Trailing constituents, anticipatory
constituents.
- foregrounded patterns of language - configurations
4. RHYTHM AND METRE

- issue of sound patterning in literature
- sound patterning plays a pivotal role in literary discourse in general, and in poetry in
particular
- core features: rhythm and metre have an important bearing on the structure
interpretation of poetry.
- METRICAL BOUNDARIES ARE NO RESPECTERS OF WORD BOUNDARIES
- METRE – (1) A pivotal criterion for the definition of verse; (2) transcends the
lexicogrammar; (3) an organised pattern of strong and weak syllables; (4) proviso that
metrical patterning should be organized and in such a way that the alternation between
accentuated syllables and weak syllables is repeated
- repetition – into a regular phrasing across a line of verse, is what makes rhythm.
- RHYTHM – (1) a patterned movement of pulses in time which is defined both by
periodicity (it occurs at regular time intervals); (2) and repetition (the same pulses occur
again and again); (3) rhythm provides an additional layer of meaning potential that can
be developed along Jakobson’s ‘axis of combination’
- In metrics, the foot is the basic unit of analysis and it refers to the span of stressed and
unstressed syllables that forms a rhythmical pattern.
- metrical feet - determined according to the number of, and ordering of, their constituent
stressed and unstressed syllables.
- metrical scheme
ex. (ws) The plough | man home | ward plods | his wea | ry way ---- iambic
pentameter
- rhyme scheme – ex. sound imagery – Alliteration
- end line, internal rhyme
ex. The ploughman plods his weary way homeward -----
- (1) /pl/ and /w/; (2) grammatical structure – SUBJ and PRED, COMP element of the
clause; ADJUNCT
- acoustic punctuation
- offbeat. an unstressed syllable normally placed at the start or the end of a line of verse.
ex. (w | sww) O | what is that | sound that so | thrills the ear
- Issues in metrical analysis: not an exact science. Conventional and reader choice
ear --- ‘end-weight’
so --- allow extra intensity to be assigned to the process of thrilling
*** while conventional phrasing dictates certain types of metrical scheme, readers of
poetry have a fair amount of choice about exactly how and where to inflect a line of
verse.
*** The distinction between strong and weak syllables is relative, and not absolute.
what is important in metrical analysis is that the contrast itself be there in the first
place, whatever the relative strength or weakness of its individual beats.
ex. Shall I | compare | thee to | a sum | mer’s day? degrees of accentuation
*** While verse is (obviously) characterized by its use of metre, it does not follow that
all metre is verse. We need therefore to treat this stylistic feature, as we do with many
aspects of style, a common resource which is shared across many types of textual
practice.
Ex. Never undress (advertisement) phonologically contoured
for anything less! Offbeat – ‘four-by-four’ swws: swws; 2 lines, 4
syllables; chiasmus ‘symmetrical ‘mirror image’;
four syllable pattern resembles a ‘pæonic’ metre.
- Not an exhaustive discussion about rhyme and meter. Self-research: feet,

versification, end-stopped line, enjambment, sound in prose and poetry, metrical
pattern, rhythmical pattern
5. NARRATIVE STYLISTICS: STYLE AS CHOICE - the system of transitivity.

- style of narrative discourse
- ‘goings on’ - encoding into the grammar…, accommodating in grammar…
- experiential function - an important marker of style
- Same ‘happening’ - several ways of representing
- Choices in style are motivated
- system of transitivity - grammatical facility used for capturing experience in
language
- expanded semantic sense
- TRANSITIVITY refers to the way meanings are encoded in the clause and to the
way different types of process are represented in language.
- three key components
- six types of process
- Model of transitivity
- VERBS, VERBS, VERBS! (read from the PPT sent –sty)
References: Simpson
Check and read all the journals, PDF and PPT files
Read from tools/principles to extension

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STYLISTICS

2. STYLISTICS AND LEVELS OF LANGUAGE

- You are the sun

3. GRAMMAR AND STYLE

4. RHYTHM AND METRE

- Not an exhaustive discussion about rhyme and meter. Self-research: feet,

5. NARRATIVE STYLISTICS: STYLE AS CHOICE - the system of transitivity.

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