Stylistics Lecture (1,2)

Introduction Stylistics  is the study of style in language. However, What is style in language? How can it be recognized and described? This course will attempt to answer such questions and more.

Style It is the shape and design of something. Its when talking about the way in which something is done and presented. The word “style” carries many meanings and functions, such as: Example (1): Its is like when describing someone’s manner of writing or speaking. Such as, “she writes in a vigorous way.

Example (2): Style of architecture and painting (e.g., Victorian, Realism) Example (3): Used to express opinion that something or someone is fashionably elegant, such as, “This hotel have style”. All them make reference to a distinctive manner of expression, through whatever medium this expression is given physical shape.

Style in language style in language can be defined as distinctive linguistic expression. Stylistics is the analysis of distinctive expression in language and the description should be conducted. Distinctive (adj)  characteristic of one person or thing, and so serving to distinguish it from others.

Features of style: Newspapers headlines Look at the following sentence and read it carefully: Life on Mars-war of the words

*This is a headline from The Friday Review The Section of The Independent of 21 August 1998. *It is a scientific debate about the possibility of life on Mars. *The main features or the headline: • Ellipsis: The omission of one or more words from a text which the hearer can recover or guess from the context. The omission of verb replaced by the dash(-).- • Intertextuality: An allusion to another text and ,at the same time, an appeal to the reader's awareness of that text. war of the words

Intertextuality Connected through a Text Writer Texts Reader

Sound . Although headlines are meant to be read silently the way their sounds and word-stresses are patterned often appeals to the inner ear. They please the ears and sense of rhythm and draw attention to the headline. -The strong stresses on the nouns 'life', 'Mars', 'war' and 'words' are equally divided over the two phrases. - Initial sounds of 'war' and 'words' alliterate.

Style as motivated choice: *A distinctive way of using language for some purpose and to some effect. •Foregrounding: The bringing of particular textual features into prominence, e.g. distinct patterns or parallelism, repetitions, and deviations from general linguistic rules or form the style expected in a specific text type or genre, or context. •Choice: It rests on the fundamental assumption that different choices will produce different styles and thereby different effects. -

If the headline writer chooses: 'Life on Mars is still in dispute' the stylistic impact on the reader would almost certainly have been much less striking Style in context: The purpose and effect of a style are deeply embedded in the particular context in which both the reader and the writer of the headline play their distinctive roles.

Types of contexts: 1. Linguistic context: The surrounding linguistic features inside a text: Typography, sounds, words, phrases, clauses, and sentences which are relevant to the interpretation of other such linguistic elements. Life on Mars Most readers will be able to guess the missing elements in the headline with the help of the linguistic environment formed by the text of the news story it relates to, and the headline writer counted on this linguistic ability.

2. Non-linguistic context: It is a much more complex notion since it may include any number of text-external features influencing the language and style of a text. - The headline writer is influenced by the a wide variety of contextual factors such as the type of newspapers he or she works for, its commercial policy, its type of readership, the writer's expectation of the readers' knowledge.

:Style and persuasive effect The following text is a blurb on the back of Margret Atwood's collection of short stories Dancing Girls and Other Stories: “This splendid volume of short fiction testifies to Margret Atwood's startlingly original voice, full of a rare intensity and exceptional intelligence. Each of the fourteen stories shimmers with feelings, each illuminates the unexplored interior landscape of a woman's mind.

Here men and women still miscommunicate, still remain separate in different rooms, different houses, or even different worlds. With brilliant flashes of fantasy, humor and unexpected violence, the stories reveal the complexities of human relationships and bring to life characters who touch us deeply, evoking terror and laughter,compassion and recognition-and dramatically demonstrate why Margret Atwood is one of the most important writers in English today. “

The features of this striking brief text are the following: Its high proportion of complimentary words and phrases such as 'splendid',' startlingly original', 'a rare intensity', 'exceptional intelligence' and ' brilliant'. Other words and images are rather emotive, e.g., [each story]' shimmers with feelings', ' illuminates the unexplored interior landscape of a woman's mind', ‘ unexpected violence ', the complexities of human relationships and bring to life characters who touch us deeply' These loaded vocabulary choices reveal the writer's motive to persuade the reader of the book's excellence. This persuasive technique is supported by the rhetorical structure of the text as a whole.

•Sentence linkers are not used such as, 'therefore', or 'because' which normally structure as argument, the blurb becomes a mere list of assertive statements without any reasoning. • The use of Juxtaposition, e.g., ' a rare intensity and exceptional intelligence', ' terror and laughter, 'compassion and recognition'. • It is ironic: The writer admits that it has been 'dramatically' rather than logically demonstrated that Margret Atwood is one of the most important writers in English Today. So, the persuasion works by dramatic effect rather than rational arguments.

Concluding remark: * The effects of a text depend on the reader assuming that these features are a matter of motivated choice on the part of a writer, that they are designed to be noticed *This draws the attention to the relation between intension and interpretation.