STYLISTICS

BS English
Course Code: 9062
Prepared by: Zaheer Ahmad
THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF
STYLISTICS
Unit#2
9062
Prepared by: Zaheer Ahmad
 OBJECTIVES
• At the end of this unit, you will be able to:
• EXPLAIN about the theoretical foundations of ‘stylistics’ as a
sub-discipline of linguistics.
• UNDERSTAND and DISTINGUISH among various theories
used in ‘stylistics’ such as:
• o Defamiliarisation
• o Foregrounding
• o Parallelism o Deviation
• Conduct Stylistic analysis using different techniques
• RECOGNIZE the ways in which these techniques help uncover
meaning in the literary texts.
THEORETICAL INFLUENCES ON STYLISTICS
• The modern stylistics, however, is influenced by the concepts
of literary criticism as well as structuralism in the mid-
twentieth century Initially considered as a more formalistic
approach due to inspirations from structuralism,
• the field is now open to a variety of analytical and
methodological techniques by the influence of pragmatics,
sociolinguistics, cognitive and corpus linguistics.
• The vast canvas of analytical and methodological approaches
due to recent developments in the above-mentioned sub-
fields of linguistics helped to interpret literary texts in new
ways and insights. This helped to add a richer understanding
of literature
 POETICS AND CLASSICAL RHETORIC
• The fields of poetics and rhetoric can be termed as
historical forebears of modern stylistics (Burke,
2014).
• We can relate much of the developments in poetics
to Aristotle. The earlier work on critical literary
theory can be attributed to him. Three points are
central to his theoretical enterprise:
• Mimesis,
• Catharsis
• Plot structure.
• Mimesis is related to the imitative nature of a work of
art such as poetry. In his book Poetics, he considers
poetry as a form of art or skill. In his views, mimesis is
a basic instinct in humans.
• . Catharsis is described by Aristotle as a method of
‘cleansing’ the soul and mind of the audience because
of the generation of intense emotions of fear or pity
due to witnessing the suffering of the tragic hero. This
cleansing helps towards making a person more sober
in his/her attitude and behaviour towards others.
• The plot structure as given by Aristotle
comprises of hamartia, peripeteia and
anagnorisis.
• Hamartia is the tragic flaw that a protagonist
has, which leads to peripeteia or a turn of
events culminated by anagnorisis or an act of
recognition by the protagonist of what
happened as a result of the ‘fatal mistake’.
• . These ideas not only relied heavily on
rhetoric but also paved the way for the
concepts in modern stylistics such as
‘foregrounding’ and ‘deviation’.
• In order to carry out argumentation, language is a mean along
with some other structures and strategies. Thus, the act of
convincing the other of a standpoint requires some means.
• Aristotle identified ‘external’ means that include proofs,
statistics and such means outside the text that do not require
extra effort to create them.
• The other type is ‘internal’ means of persuasion that require
artistic use of language for convincing the readers. These
artistic means are crucial for the art of rhetoric and include
• logos (the appeal to logic),
• pathos (appeal to emotions)
• ethos (appeal to ethics).
• Logos are solid reasons provided for the sake of argumentation.
• Pathos is the use of specific emotional appeals for the sake of moving
the audience.
• Ethos is concerned with the credibility, esteem and character of the
speaker or writer which adds to the effect of convincing.
• Aristotle also mentions the arrangement of arguments and style as
crucial to the art of rhetoric.
• Some of the elements of style mentioned by him, such as clarity,
rhythm, metaphor, and syntax, are foundational concepts in modern
stylistics. The choice of style features can lead to complex and
artistically appealing texts as well as simple and everyday texts. The
concept thus laid foundations for the analysis of stylistic features of
some texts as distinct from everyday texts as expressed through the
concepts of foregrounding and deviation in the later developments in
the field.
 STRUCTURALISM
• Among the key concepts of structuralism that were influential for laying
the foundation of stylistics are the concepts of langue and parole.
• Langue is the abstract system of language and the resources available to
the users,
• parole is the actual use of that system. The abstract system of language
as a resource exists as a social system available to everyone in a particular
society, whereas parole exists at an individual level based on the patterns
of usage.
• The system of language comprises of linguistic signs which further
comprise of signified and signifier. These components of sign give
identifying features of sign in the form of its verbal representation and
mental image.
• For example, the linguistic sign ‘fish’ is identified through its acoustic
representation as /fɪʃ/ and the mental image of fish.
• (‘syntagmatic axis’ is opposed to a vertical or ‘paradigmatic axis’)
 RUSSIAN FORMALISM
• The modern stylistics is indebted to Russian Formalism for
laying down its theoretical foundations in the early twentieth
century
• Roman Jakobson, the father of modern stylistics, who later
inspired French Structuralism. He was intrigued by uncovering
the properties of literary texts to identify their ‘literariness’.
• The Russian Formalists believed that linguistics can help in the
identification of the features of language which make literary
texts stand out or different from the practical texts. Therefore,
the theoretical positioning of stylistics as emerged from
Russian Formalism involves the distinctiveness of literary
language. Besides, it was a visible move from confining the
literary scholarship to ‘limited’ and ‘inadequate’ interpretation
to more evidence-based, rational and systematic inquiry.
 Defamiliarisation
• The purpose of the movement was to
distinguish between the properties of literary
language and ordinary language. The term
was first used in 1917 by Viktor Šklovsky.
• Formalists believe that literary language is
clearly distinct from the ordinary language. As
discussed before, there is a strong and well-
founded criticism on the clear distinction
between literary and ordinary language
• According to formalists , what makes literary language
distinctive is its quality to present the ordinary as
‘outstanding’ and the familiar as ‘unfamiliar’. The
ordinary language, since it is strongly tied to the
immediate social context, is unable to generate
‘reflexivity’ or pondering on a particular experience.
The literary language, on the other hand, is not
context-bound and helps create ‘unfamiliarity’ with
something very familiar. It helps us ponder on
experiences that are not intrinsically ours but we as
humans can easily relate
 Foregrounding
• It can be explained as a deliberate attempt of a writer to make
certain features of a text ‘stand out’ from the rest. We can
easily map the technique of foregrounding in texts through
the example of foregrounding as a technique carried out when
drawing objects. Any piece of art is a composition of various
objects with a specific arrangement and organization. Care is
taken by an artist to make viewers’ eyes follow a specific path
that is aesthetically pleasing as well ascertains the particular
portrayal of meaning. For this purpose, artists normally
engage viewers by allocating a primary centre of interest or
focal point in a drawing. Foregrounding helps giving more
emphasis to and a perspective to a phenomenon
• Foregrounding is the opposite of
automatization, that is the deautomatisation
of an act; the more an act is automatized, the
less it is consciously executed; the more it is
foregrounded, the more completely conscious
does it become.
• Objectively speaking: automatization
schematizes an event; foregrounding means
the violation of the scheme. (Mukařovský,)
 Linguistic Deviation
• This is a type of foregrounding which occurs
using some ‘unexpected irregularity’ The
irregularity is encountered by the readers
when a writer uses certain features that go
against the reader’s expectations.
• Deviations can be carried out at various levels
of discourse to exploit generic conventions
such as lexical, semantic, grammatical,
phonological
• There can be two types of deviations. When some
variation occurs at any level as against the ‘normal’
usage, we call that as ‘external deviation’.
• The normal usage means established ways in which
certain genre is structured and expressed.
• The other kind of deviation occurs within a particular
work or a specific text in which the writer deviates
from the own norms as settled within that text.
• Such ‘internal deviation’ gains the reader’s attention as
it goes against the ‘norms’ set by the writer in that text.
 Linguistic Parallelism
• Parallelism is ‘unexpected regularity’ . It can
be likened to regularity in a pattern which is
more than that is required. Despite the
limitless available options, the writer
intentionally limits him/herself to a recurrent
or repeated use of a particular feature. This is
another significant way in which specific
intended outcomes for aesthetic purposes are
created.