Meaning from a Stylistic Point of View
General Notes on Style and Stylistics
Stylistics is a branch of general linguistics. Its other branches are lexicology, grammar and phonetics. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks:
1) the investigation of the inventory of special language means which secure the desirable effects of the utterance, they are called stylistic devices or expressive means;
2) the investigation of certain types of texts which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect communication. They are called functional styles.
Stylistics necessarily touches upon synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, emotion, and colouring. Much attention is paid in linguo-stylistics to the analysis of expressive means (EM) and stylistic devices (SD), to their nature and function, to their classification and possible interpretation of additional meanings.
In order to ascertain the borders of stylistics it is necessary to go at some length into the question of what style is.
The original meaning of the world “style” was a writing implement - stilus; it was a short stick, sharp at one end and flat at the other, which was used by the Romans to write on wax tablets. But already in classical Latin the word acquired a terminological meaning. It came to denote one’s way of expressing oneself. Later in French the word acquired evaluative tint (оценочный оттенок). It came to denote a good way of expressing oneself. We speak of style in architecture, painting, clothes, behavior, music, etc.
The word “stylistics” is a newcomer to the English vocabulary. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it was first recorded in 1882 meaning “the science of literary style, the study of the stylistic features”.
Scholars give different definitions of the term “style”. Here are some of them:
1) “Style is a quality of language which communicates precisely emotions or thoughts, or a system of emotions or thoughts, peculiar to the author” (J. Middleton Murry)
2) “Style is a contextually restricted linguistic variation” (Enkvist)
3) “Style is a selection of non-distinctive features of language” (L. Bloomfield)
4) “Style is a product of individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities” (Seymour Chatman).
It follows then that the term “style”, being ambiguous, needs a restricting adjective to denote what particular aspect of style we intend to deal with. With the development of the theory of the language on the one hand and the theory of the literature on the other hand the term “style” came to be modified as style in language and style in literature.
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Style in a language is understood as to be the whole corpus of expressive means of the language. It is lingo-stylistics.
Style in literature studies the peculiarities of the writer’s style, his individual and creative utilization (choice) of the resources of the language; the limitations are superimposed by the writer’s period, genre and purpose. The main difference is that linguo-stylistics studies all the expressive means of the language while style in literature (literary style) studies the peculiarities of that or this writer’s style, so called individual styles. Individual style is a unique combination of language units, expressive means and stylistic devices peculiar to a given writer, which makes that writer’s works or even utterance easily recognizable.
A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim of communication.
Stylistics and Other Linguistic Sciences
Stylistic is a branch of general linguistics. Its other branches are lexicology, grammar, phonetics.
Stylistics and Lexicology
Lexicology studies vocabulary, the origin and development of words, the meaning of words and word-building. Lexico-stylistics studies the interaction of primary and contextual (контекстуальное, вытекающее из контекста) meanings. It studies expressive, evaluative, emotional and etc meanings of words.
E.g. The hall applauded. (metonymy)
1) hall – room (primary meaning)
2) hall – people (contextual meaning)
E.g. She was a sunny sort of creature. Too fond of the bottle. (metonymy, detachment – обособление)
1) bottle – the container (primary meaning)
2) bottle – the wine (contextual meaning)
Let’s analyze one more sentence.
E.g. They took measures to secure a convenient place near the river.
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This sentence can be analyzed from the points of view of lexicology and stylistics.
1) Lexicology: all the words of the sentence but for the articles and prepositions are of foreign origin; 2) stylistically the sentence is neutral.
But if in the sentence we come across such words as bouquet, billet-daux we perceive that and analyze the words from the point of view of stylistics.
Stylistics and Grammar
Stylistics is connected with grammar. Grammar is divided into morphology and syntax. There are a morphological stylistics and syntactical stylistics.
E.g. One I-am-sorry-for-you is worth twenty I-told-you-sos…
This sentence sounds funny when the “s” ending is added to the whole of it.
Syntactical stylistics studies the expressive potentialities of the word order of different communicative types of sentences.
E.g. You just come home or I will… (There is something which is employed here; there is certain implication – threat)
Stylistics and Phonetics
Phonetics is concerned with the phonetic structure of a language. It studies speech sounds, their distribution in words, mutual adaptation, stress, syllabus formation, intonation, etc.
Phonostylistics studies how the sound form of speech makes it more expressive. It studies metre, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, sound imitation, etc.
Meaning from a Stylistic Point of View
It is more or less recognized that word-meaning is not homogeneous; it is made of various components. These components are usually described as types of meaning. The two main types are the grammatical meaning and the lexical meaning.
Word
the Grammar meaning the Lexical meaning
The Denotational meaning the Conotational meaning
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