Outline:

 Definition of style and stylistics.

 Types of style and branches of stylistics.
 School of thoughts or concepts of style and
stylistics.
 Scope of stylistics
 Conclusion
Style
Definition of Style
The style in writing can be defined as the way a writer writes. It is the technique that an individual
author uses in his writing. It varies from author to author, and depends upon one’s syntax, word choice,
and tone. It can also be described as a “voice” that readers listen to when they read the work of a writer.

Types of Style
There are four basic literary styles used in writing. These styles distinguish the works of different
authors, one from another. Here are four styles of writing:

Expository or Argumentative Style

Expository writing style is a subject-oriented style. The focus of the writer in this type of writing style is
to tell the readers about a specific subject or topic, and in the end the author leaves out his own opinion
about that topic.

Descriptive Style

In descriptive writing style, the author focuses on describing an event, a character or a place in detail.
Sometimes, descriptive writing style is poetic in nature in, where the author specifies an event, an object,
or a thing rather than merely giving information about an event that has happened. Usually the
description incorporates sensory details.

Persuasive Style
Persuasive style of writing is a category of writing in which the writer tries to give reasons and
justification to make the readers believe his point of view. The persuasive style aims to persuade and
convince the readers.

Narrative Style

Narrative writing style is a type of writing wherein the writer narrates a story. It includes short stories,
novels, novellas, biographies, and poetry.

Short Examples of Style in Sentences

1. If it sounds like I’m writing, then I prefer to rewrite it.
(Conversational)
2. “I think it’s a good ide,.” said Jenny.
“You can imagine the outcomes!” retorted Emma, pushing the door open.
Reluctantly, Jenny followed.
(Narrative)
3. The sunset fills the entire sky with the lovely deep color of rubies, setting the clouds ablaze.
(Descriptive)
4. The waves waltz along the seashore, going up and down in a gentle and graceful rhythm, like
dancing.
(Descriptive)
5. A trip to Switzerland is an excellent experience that you will never forget, offering beautiful
nature, fun, and sun. Book your vacation trip today.
(Persuasive)
6. She hears a hoarse voice, and sees a shadow moving around the balcony. As it moves closer to her,
she screams to see a gigantic wolf standing before her.
(Narrative)
7. From the garden, the child plucks a delicate rose, touching and cradling it gently as if it is a
precious jewel.
(Descriptive)
8. What if you vote for me? I ensure you that your taxes will be very low, the government will
provide free education, and there will be equality and justice for all citizens. Cast your vote for me
today.
(Persuasive)
9. The deep blue color of the cat’s eyes is like ocean water on the clearest day you could ever
imagine.
(Descriptive)
10. The soft hair of my cat feels silky, and her black color sparkles as it reflects sunlight.
(Descriptive)
11. This painting has blooming flowers, rich and deep blues on vibrant green stems, begging me to
pick them.
(Descriptive)
12. Our criminal investigators are famous for recovering clients’ assets, as we not only take your cases
but represent truly your interests.
(Persuasive)
13. Our headache medicines will give you relief for ten hours, with only one pill – and without any
side effects. Try it today.
(Persuasive)
 14. Tax raising strategy is wrong because it will cripple businesses. We should reduce taxes to boost
growth.
(Persuasive)

What is Style? Explain its traditional, modern

and linguistic concepts. What are Stylistics?
Style:
A Dictionary of Literary Terms defines style as: “The characteristic manner of expression in prose or
verse; how a particular writer says things. The analysis and assessment of style involves examination of a
writer’s choice of words, his figures of speech, the devices (rhetorical or otherwise), the shape of his
sentences, and the shape of his paragraphs-- indeed, of every conceivable aspect of his language and the
way in which he uses it. Style defies complete analysis or definition… it is the tone and voice of the writer
himself; as peculiar to him as his laugh, his walk, his handwriting and the expression on his face”

Traditional Concept of Style:

Style has been an object of study from ancient times. Aristotle, Cicero and Demetrius treated style as the
proper adornment of thought. In this view, which prevailed throughout the Renaissance period, devices
of style can be classified. The essayist or orator is expected to frame his ideas with the help of model
sentences and prescribed kinds of “figures” suitable to his mode of discourse.
The traditional idea of style as something properly added to thoughts contrasts with the ideas that derive
from Charles Bally, the Swiss philologist, and Leo Spitzer, the Austrian literary critic. According to
followers of these thinkers, style in language arises from the possibility of choice among alternative forms
of expression, as for example, between “children,” “kids,” “youngsters,” and “youths,” each of which has
a different value.

This theory emphasizes the relation between style and linguistics, as does the theory of Edward Sapir,
who talked about literature that is form-based (Horace, Virgil, and much of Latin literature) and
literature that is content-based (Homer, Plato, Dante, William Shakespeare) and the near
untranslatability of the former.

Style is also seen as a mark of character. The Count de Buffon’s famous epigram that means “Style is the
man himself” in his Discourse sur le style suggests that, no matter how calculatingly choices may be
made, a writer’s style will bear the mark of his personality. An experienced writer is able to rely on the
power of his habitual choices of sounds, words, and syntactic patterns to convey his personality or
fundamental outlook. The traditional, literary critical attitude towards ‘Style’ is subjective and
unscientific, and considers it a writer’s intuitive insight into aesthetics.

This concept of style is essentially ambiguous because the reader may or may not share with the writer
and critic the level and delicacy of intuitive perception. It is, therefore, undemocratic and imperialistic in
its nature. Style is a writer’s individual mode of expression.

 Modern Concept of Style:

The twentieth-century work on stylistics, particularly in Britain, by scholars such as Roger Fowler and
M. A. K. Halliday, looked at relationships between social, contextual, and formal linguistic analysis.
There were also attempts to interrogate the logical assumptions underlying stylistics.
 Modern stylistics uses the tools of formal linguistic analysis coupled with the methods of literary
criticism; its goal is to try to isolate characteristic uses and functions of language and rhetoric rather than
advance normative or prescriptive rules and patterns.

Published as Linguistics and Poetics in 1960, Jakobson's lecture is often credited with being the first
coherent formulation of stylistics, and his argument was that the study of poetic language should be a
sub- branch of linguistics. Michael Halliday is an important figure in the development of British stylistics.
His 1971 study Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William
Golding's The Inheritors is a key essay. One of Halliday's contributions has been the use of the term
register to explain the connections between language and its context.

For Halliday, register is distinct from dialect. Dialect refers to the habitual language of a particular user
in a specific geographical or social context. Register describes the choices made by the user, choices which
depend on three variables:
1. Field ("what the participants... are actually engaged in doing", for instance, discussing a specific
subject or topic),
2. Tenor (who is taking part in the exchange)
3. Mode (the use to which the language is being put).

Fowler comments that different fields produce different language, most obviously at the level of
vocabulary. The linguist David Crystal points out that Halliday's 'tenor' stands as a roughly equivalent
term for ‘style’, which is a more specific alternative used by linguists to avoid ambiguity.

Halliday’s third category, mode, is what he refers to as the symbolic organization of the situation.
Downes recognizes two distinct aspects within the category of mode and suggests that not only does it
describe the relation to the medium: written or spoken, but also describes the genre of the text.

Halliday refers to genre as pre-coded language, language that has not simply been used before, but that
predetermines the selection of textual meanings. The linguist William Downes makes the point that the
principal characteristic of register, no matter how peculiar or diverse, is that it is obvious and
immediately recognizable.

Linguistic Approach to Style:

As linguistics studies language scientifically, its studies style in an impersonal and objective manner.
Stylistics defines, studies and analyses style objectively and technically applying methodology of
linguistics. Literature was traditionally appreciated non-technically and the critic depended on his
superior vision and arbitrary good taste of the reader.
Stylistics, on the other hand, evaluates a literary text precisely. Descriptive linguistics gives stylistic
analysis of a text at phonological, syntactic and semantic levels of linguistic description. Stylistics uses its
own meta-language and terminology to analyze a text and to analyze its items and structures. The
communicative power of these isolated linguistic items and structures is evaluated objectively.

 Riffaterre has well put the role and function of stylistics:

“The author’s encoding is permanent, but the process of decoding changes as the language changes in
the course of time. Stylistics should encompass this simultaneity of permanence and change.” M.
Riffaterre’s definition of style is more enlightening and also suggests the function of stylistics: “Style is
the means by which the… encoder ensures that his message is decoded in such a way that the reader not
only understands the information conveyed, but shares the writer’s attitude towards it.”
According to Aitchison, “The linguistic analysis of literary language is known as stylistics…the words
style and stylistics have acquired somewhat specialized, narrow usage of linguistics applied to literature.”
John Lyons defines stylistics “as the study of stylistic variation in languages and of the way in which this
is exploited by their users”

STYLISTICS:

 Concept no. 01: 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.
 Concept no. 02: Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which applies the theory and methodology of
modern linguistics to the study of style.

Definition of Stylistics:
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.

Scope of Stylistics:
 Literary stylistics: concentrating on the unique features of various literary works, such as poem, novel,
prose, drama, etc.
 General stylistics: concentrating on the general features of various types of language use, including
literary discourses and other practical styles.

Stylistics is a broad term that has assumed different meanings from different linguistic scholars. But it
can simply be said to be the study of style.

Style on its own as defined by Lucas (1955) is: the effective use of language, especially in prose, whether
to make statements or to rouse emotions. It involves first of all the power to put fact with clarity and
brevity.

Style has also been defined as the description and analysis of the variability forms of linguistic items in
actual language use. Leech (1969) quotes Aristotle as saying that “the most effective means of achieving
both clarity and diction and a certain dignity is the use of altered from of words.”

Stylistics is also defined as a study of the different styles that are present in either a given utterance or a
written text or document. The consistent appearance of certain structures, items and elements in a
speech, an utterance or in a given text is one of the major concerns of Stylistics.

Stylistics requires the use of traditional levels of linguistic description such as sounds, form, structure
and meaning. It then follows that the consistent appearance of certain structures, items and elements in
speech utterances or in a given text is one of the major concerns of stylistics.

 A linguistic Stylistic study is concerned with the varieties of language and the exploration of some of the
formal linguistic features which characterize them. The essence and the usefulness of stylistics is that it
enables the immediate understanding of utterances and texts, thereby maximizing our enjoyment of the
texts.
The concepts of style and stylistic variation in language are based on the general notion that within the
language system, the content can be encoded in more than one linguistic form. Thus, it is possible for it to
operate at all linguistic levels such as phonological, lexical and syntactic. Therefore, style may be
regarded as a choice of linguistic means, as deviation from the norms of language use, as recurrent
features of linguistic forms and as comparisons.
Stylistics deals with a wide range of language varieties and styles that that are possible in creating
different texts, whether spoken or written, monologue or dialogue, formal or informal, scientific or
religious etc.
Again, stylistics is concerned with the study of the language of literature or the study of the language
habits of particular authors and their writing patterns. From the foregoing, stylistics can be said to be the
techniques of explication which allows us to define objectively what an author has done, (linguistic or
non- linguistic), in his use of language.
The main aim of stylistics is to enable us understand the intent of the author in the manner the
information has been passed across by the author or writer.
Therefore, stylistics is concerned with the examination of grammar, lexis, semantics as well as
phonological properties and discursive devices. Stylistics is more interested in the significance of function
that the chosen style fulfills.
Stylistics: Stylistics is the study and interpretation of texts in regard to their linguistic and tonal style. It is the scientific
and systematic study of linguistics. As a discipline, it links literary criticism to linguistics. It does nonfunctions an
autonomous domain on its own, and can be applied to understanding literature and journalism as well as linguistics.

Stylistics as a science Stylistics is a branch of general linguistics. It is regarded as a language science which deals with
the results of the act of communication.

There are 2 basic objects of stylistics:

- stylistic devices and figures of speech - functional styles

Branches of Stylistics
Computational Stylistics Lexical Stylistics Comparative Stylistics Phono stylistics Grammatical Stylistics
Function of Stylistics Stylistics syntax Individual style study

COMPUTATIONAL STYLISTICS

Pure computational stylistics Introduction Computational stylistics The field Scope Corpus Sample of corpus Empirical
study Application to Language Learning

Lexical stylistics:

Lexical stylistics studies functions of direct and figurative meanings, also the way contextual meaning of a word is
realized in the text. Lexical stylistics deals with various types of connotations – expressive, evaluative, emotive;
neologisms, dialectal words and their behavior in the text.

Comparative stylistics:

Comparative stylistics is connected with the contrastive study of more than one language. It analyses the stylistic
resources not inherent in а separate language but at the crossroads of two languages, or two literature sand is
obviously linked to the theory of translation.

Phono stylistics:
 Phono stylistics is phonetical organization of prose and poetic texts. Here are included rhythm, rhythmical structure,
rhyme, alliteration, assonance and correlation of the sound form and meaning. Also, studies deviation in normative
pronunciation. Phono stylistics studies the way phonetic means of the language function in various oral realizations of
the language. The choice of the phonetic means suitable to this or that situation depends on a number of factors,
among which extra-linguistics ones are very important as they result in phono stylistic varieties.

Grammatical stylistics: Grammatical stylistics is subdivided into morphological and syntactical stylistics.

• Morphological stylistics views stylistic potential of grammatical categories of different parts of speech. Potential of
the number, pronouns.

• Syntactical stylistics studies syntactic, expressive means, word order and word combinations, different types of
sentences and types of syntactic connections. Also deals with origin of the text, its division on the paragraphs, dialogs,
direct and indirect speech, the connection of the sentences, types of sentences.

Function of Stylistics:

• Stylistics of decoding– deals with all subdivisions of the language and its possible use (newspaper, colloquial style).
Its object - correlation of the message and communicative situation.

• Stylistics of encoding - The shape of the information (message) is coded and the addressee plays the part of decoder
of the information which is contained in message. The problems which are connected with adequate reception of the
message without any loses (deformation) are the problems of stylistics of encoding.

Stylistic Syntax:

Stylistic Syntax is one of the oldest branches of stylistic studies that grew out of classical rhetoric. The material in
question lends itself readily to analysis and description. Stylistic syntax has to do with the expressive order of words,
types of syntactic links (asyndeton, polysyndeton), figures of speech (antithesis, chiasmus, etc.). It also deals with
bigger units from paragraph onwards.

Individual style study:

It studies the style of the author. It looks for correlations between the creative concepts of thianthrene the language
of his work.

Conclusion Stylistics is the scientific study of language and literature. It has link with other different fields of
sciences. Study of stylistics include phonology, morphology, phonetics, syntax, etc. Stylistics helps to understand the
language in a different and better way. Use of stylistics is also seen in our daily life as reading sign boards etc.