1. Stailistiks/stylistix
By: Atyha Rahman

2. Style in language ?
 What is style in language?
 How is it produced?
 How it can be recognized and described?
 Is it a general feature of language?

3. style

4. Stttttttyleeeeee
 She writes in a vigorous style.
 Haris started off in a fine style.
 She dresses in a superb style.
 I don‟t like his style of management.
 Your cooking style differs from mine.
 The elegant style of a home !
 They live in grand style .
 Here one can eat in style !

5. ssssssssssstyle
 How stylish she is !
 How stylishly does she speak!
 I like Bernard Shaw‟s style.
 Housewives don‟t care much for style.
 What a student has to do with style ?
 Stylish means being brand conscious.
 I like Operah‟ s style .

6. stylllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllle
 What is common ?

7. Style in Language
 Style in language can be defined to be “
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Distinctive linguistic expression”
What makes an expression distinctive?
Is every expression distinctive ?
Does every expression carry style ?
Does stylistics seek to study every human
expression ?

8. Stylistics
 Hence stylistics is the study of style ,style in
language , i.e., the distinctive linguistic
expression

9. Stylistics
 The aesthetic function of language
 Expressive means in language
 Synonymous ways of rendering one and the
same idea
 Emotional colouring of language
 A system of special devices ,called stylistic
devices

10. Stylistics
 The splitting of the literary language into separate
subsystems called stylistic devices.
 The inter-relation between language and thought
 The individual manner of an author in making use
of language

11. stylistics
 Language is not a disorganized mass of sounds
and symbols ,,,
 It is instead an intricate web of levels ,layers and
links.
 Any utterance or piece of text is organized
through several distinct levels of language.
 Levels are inter-connected ,they interpenetrate
and depend on one another.

12. Stylistics studies …
 Levels:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Phonological level
Graphological level
Morphological level
Syntactical/grammatical
Semantic level
Pragmatic level

13. Style in language
 Style as choice
 Style as man
 Style as deviation
 Style as conformity
 Style as time/period
 Style as situation

14. Style as choice
 Choice means options and variations that are
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available to the author.
Depends on the situation and the genre that the
writer chooses.
Writer‟s choice reflects his ego and social
conditions of his time.
A writer can choose between “start” ,and
“commence” , “ proceed” and “go”
Style is the name of writer‟s choice of words ,and
rhetorical devices.

15. Style as man
 Distinctive features distinguish one person from
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the other
One is able to differentiate between the writings
of Morrison and Achebe.
Style is shaped by one‟s social and political
background, religious inclination,culture
,education ,and geographical location etc.
style an index of personality
Objection : if a person exhibits different styles on
different occasion ,does it mean that he has
different personalities?

16. Style as deviation
 Deviation from the norm: style
 The concept of style as deviation ,itself implies
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that there are rules , norms ,and conventions to
be followed.
When these conventions are crossed ,deviation
occurs.
Departure from what is taken as a common
practice.
Rules of language are jettisoned intentionally by
the writer , whether at any level.
“dangerous safety” , “ open secret”.

17. Style as conformity
 Conformity is the first available option to a writer
 It is writer‟s decision to conform or deviate from
the norms.
 A major weakness : this notion clips creativity
 “style as conformity” is often strictly enforced in
certain fields and circumstances
 Most of the time conformity is the pre-requisite of
acceptability.

18. Style as period/ time
 A period usually dictates the style employed by
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the writers
The style of any given period has recognizably
predominant features that make such a poeriod
distinct.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries used a
particular style of writing : writing in verse
Henrik ibsen was a huge influence as dramas in
verse were never liked after him ,and the
previous style was abandoned.
Victorian ,Elizabethan , Renaissance and Modern
periods all have their particular styles ,different

19. Style as situation
 It is the context that determines language choice
in speaking or writing .
 Certain words are appropriate for certain
occasions ,while some are considered taboo
,vulgar or abominable.
 Language is used according to situation or
circumstance .

20. Types of stylistics
 Linguistic stylistics
 Literary stylistics
 Functional stylistics
 Encoding stylistics
 Decoding stylistics/ reader-response
stylistics/affective stylistics

21.  Creativity and innovation is not the preserve of
literary writings only.
 advertising, journalism, popular music – even
casual conversation) often display a high degree
of stylistic dexterity .
 Linguistic and „ extra-linguistic‟ parameters are
inextricably woven together , and make the text
the way it means .

22. 3 Rs
 stylistic analysis should be rigorous
 stylistic analysis should be retrievable
 stylistic analysis should be replicable.

23. Rigorous
 it should be based on an explicit framework of
analysis.
 It is underpinned by structured models of
language and discourse that explain how we
process and understand various patterns in
language.

24. Retrievable
Analysis is organized through
explicit terms and criteria ,the
meanings of which are
agreed upon by other
stylisticians.

25. Replicable
 Replicability does not mean that we should copy
each other‟s work ,rather it means that the
methods should be sufficiently transparent as to
allow other stylisticians to verify them, either by
testing them on the same text or by applying
them beyond that text.

26. Linguistics stylistics
 Explores the linguistic features of a text.
 style is the selection of certain linguistic forms or
features over other possible ones.
 Hence Linguistic stylistics, points out those
linguistic choices which a writer or speaker has
made as well as the effects of the choices.
 primarily concerned with the use of language and
its effects in a text.
 Uses objective and verifiable approach to analyse
texts.

27. Literary stylistics
 Synonymous to literary criticism ,in a way.
 The task of literary stylistics is to decipher a
message encoded in an unfamiliar way, to
express its meaning in familiar and communal
terms and thereby to provide the private message
with a public relevance.
 The literary stylistician is obviously sensitive to
language, but his/her concern is not principally
with the way the signals of the artist are
constructed but with the underlying message
which an interpretation of the signals reveal.

28. Two aspects to literature
 Verbal
&
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Artistic

29. Goals of stylistics
 To establish discourse peculiarities
 To induce appreciation of discourses
 To ascertain linguistic habits
 To make critical judgements

30. Encoding stylistics

31. encoding stylistics/authorcentered
 the peculiarities of the author's style are
singled out on the basis of comparison
with other writers.
 Encoding stylistic analysis includes the
critical study of the author's style,
vocabulary means used by him.
 Ideas can be extracted from the writer's
diaries, letters, articles, etc.

32. Encoding stylistics
Encoding stylistic analysis takes into
consideration the facts of the writer's biography,
the genesis of the work in question, the
characteristic features of the epoch and literary
trend.
 This kind of analysis is based on the thorough
knowledge of the History of Literature.
 Analysis from the author's point of view treats the
work of art as a result or consequence of creative
activity.


33. Step by step analysis
 The analysis of the text goes through a number of
definite stages. It begins with the analysis of main
ideas and themes of the literary work which
include the complex of philosophical, moral,
social, political, psychological problems and
author's emotions, attitudes and view on them.
 This stage is followed with the analysis of the
composition and the system of images of the
literary work connected with the plot, characters
and setting.

34. Step by step………
 Then follows the analysis of lexical and
grammatical expression of the images stylistic devices and means. And finally
we pay attention to phonetic or sound
form of the text and its graphical
representation.

35. A totally opposite way….
 the reader usually follows the reversed way. He
transforms the graphical presentation into words,
then into the system of images, feelings, thoughts
of the author, and at last the reader can grasp the
main idea of the author. Much attention is paid to
the text, less to the writer. A work of art is treated
as a source of information and impressions. This
is another kind of stylistic analysis, i.e. from the
reader's point of view, or decoding stylistics.

36. Affective stylistics

37.  Affective stylistics is derived from analyzing
further the notion that a literary text is an event
that occurs in time—that comes into being as it
is read—rather than an object that exists in
space.

38.  The text is examined closely, often line by line
or even word by word, in order to understand
how (stylistics) it affects (affective) the
reader in the process of reading.

39.  Although there is thus a great deal of focus on
the text, which is why some theorists consider
this approach transactional in nature, many
practitioners of affective stylistics do not
consider the text an objective, autonomous
entity—it does not have a fixed meaning
independent of readers—because the text
consists of the results it produces, and those
results occur within the reader.

40.  For example, when Stanley Fish describes how a text
is structured, the structure he describes is the structure
of the reader’s response as it occurs from moment to
moment, not the structure of the text as we might
assemble it—like puzzle pieces all spread out at once
before us—after we’ve finished reading.

41.  Indeed, it is the “slow-motion,” phrase-by-phrase
analysis of how the text structures the reader’s
response for which affective stylistics is perhaps best
known.

42.  According to Fish, the question “What does this
sentence mean?” or “What does this sentence say?”
yields little because the sentence provides us with no
facts with which we could answer the question. Even if
we notice that the sentence does say something—

43.  In addition to an analysis of the reading activities that
structure the reader’s response, other kinds of evidence
are usually gathered to further support the claim that
the text is about the experience of reading. For
example, most practitioners of affective stylistics will
cite the responses of other readers—of other literary
critics, for example—to show that their own analyses
of the reading activities provided by a particular text
are valid for readers other than just them-selves.

44.  . A critic might even cite an extreme divergence of
critical opinion about the text to support, for example,
the contention that the text provides an unsettling,
decentering, or confusing reading experience. This
wouldn’t mean that the text is flawed but that by
unsettling the reader it demonstrates, say, the fact that
interpretation of written texts, and perhaps of the
world, is a problematic endeavor from which we
should not expect to achieve certainty.

45.  Thematic evidence from the text itself is also usually
provided to show that the text is about the experience
of reading. For example, the reader-response critic
shows how the experiences of characters and
descriptions of settings mirror the reader’s experience
reading the text.

46. 
As noted above, the textual evidence at this point
is thematic: the critic shows that the theme of the text
is a particular kind of reading experience, such as the
difficulties involved in reading, the processes involved
in making sense of the text, or the inevitability of
misreading.

47.  Although many practitioners of affective stylistics
believe that the text, as an independent object,
disappears in their analysis and becomes what it really
is—an experience that occurs within the reader—their
use of thematic evidence, as we’ve just seen,
underscores the important role played by the text in
establishing what the reader’s experience is.