Stylistics DR.

Bakhtiar

WHAT IS STYLISTICS?

The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, 1977, 2nd ed. 1988 defines stylistics as:

A branch of linguistics which studies the characteristics of situationally distinctive uses of language, with
particular reference to literary language, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular
choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language.

According to this definition, stylistics studies the linguistic elements such as diction, imagery, sound, syntax,
rhythm, metaphors, and other figures, identifying and classifying them in a systematic fashion derived from the
theories and concepts of modern linguistics. These features are used and moved from one place to another so as
to find out what message the writers want to convey and what effects they desire to make. Moreover, it shows
that the individuals and the social groups choose different linguistic features and put them in diverse positions
to produce certain effects.

STYLISTICS: ITS RISE AND DEVELOPMENT

Stylistics grew up in the second half of the twentieth century and since then stylisticians try to analyze literary
texts through combining the use of linguistic analysis with the psychological processes involved in reading.
Stylistics explores how readers interact with the aesthetic use of language in texts and the creative style of
authors to explain the meanings and aims of the works.

Stylistics as a method of textual interpretation focuses attention on language and style because the writer
deploys in a special manner the various forms, patterns and levels that constitute linguistic structure to convey
his message and to make effects on readers. Nicolas Coupland notes “style is a way of doing something”, and
everything has its style, whether it is a literary work or a building. Rhetoricians focus attention on the
interaction between text, writer and audience.

stylistics developed rapidly because analysts and critics believed that this new approach would build a bridge
between language and criticism. They thought that studying language and form is necessary to understand a text
and to interpret it. Roman Jakobson says “all of us here, however, definitely realize that a linguist deaf to the
poetic function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with
linguistic methods, are equally flagrant anachronisms”. If one of these sides is neglected, the analysis will be
imperfect.

STYLISTICS AND LEVELS OF LANGUAGE

* The sound of spoken language; the way words are pronounced. (phonology; phonetics)

* The patterns of written language; the shape of language on the page. (graphology)

* The way words are constructed; words and their constituent structures. (morphology)

* The way words combine with other words to form phrases and sentences. (syntax; grammar)

* The words we use; the vocabulary of a language. (lexical analysis; lexicology)

* The meaning of words and sentences; semantics

- Thus Stylistics is a systematic and objective study of texts which adapts the methods and principles of
linguistics to the analysis of literature.

(listen)

this a dog barks and

how crazily houses

eyes people smiles

faces streets hurry it with

steeples are eagerly a thousand poems

tumbl my darling

ing through wonder but nobody will stop it

ful sunlight With All The Policemen In The World

―look―

selves, stir:writhe Edward Estlin (E.E.) Cummings

o-p-e-n-i-n-g

are(leaves;flowers)dreams

,come quickly come

run run

with me now

jump shout(laugh dance cry

sing)for it’s Spring

―irrevocably;

and in

earth sky trees

:every

where a miracle arrives

(yes)

you and i may not

Open class words are those which carry the majority of meaning in a language, as opposed to closed class
(grammatical) words such as determiners (e.g. this, that, the) and prepositions (e.g. in, at, on). Closed class
words act like sentence 'glue' and link together open class words in meaningful arrangements (sentences).

We can see from the above table that the poem consists mainly of nouns and verbs. The nouns are mostly
concrete - that is, they refer to physical objects - and only two of the nouns are abstract (dreams and miracle). It
is possible to divide the nouns into two rough areas of meaning, or semantic fields.

NOUNS RELATED TO NATURE NOUNS RELATED TO HUMANS

dog, sunlight, leaves, flowers, earth, sky, trees, houses, eyes, people, smiles, faces, streets, steeples,
miracle, world dreams, poems, policemen

The mixture in the poem of nouns belonging to these two different semantic classes could be said to account for
what we perceive as an interconnection between nature and man. The two abstract nouns, dreams and miracle,
could belong to either category and might be seen to connect the two semantic classes.
If we now look at the verbs in the poem we can see that they create a sense of immediacy as we read it. They
also contribute to our understanding of it as an address to another person. All the verbs which are marked for
tense (finite verbs) are in the present tense. So we have present simple verbs such as 'barks' [2], 'is' [19] and
'arrives' [24] and present progressive forms such as 'are [eagerly] tumb/ling' [6/7/8] and 'o-p-e-n-i-n-g/are'
[12/13]. In addition to helping to establish the sense of immediacy, the progressive present participles
('tumbling' and 'opening') indicate the ongoing ('stretched') nature of the actions.

This contributes to the idea of the inevitability of nature - Spring is arriving even as the poet speaks. This is also
reinforced by the four adverbs of manner, which convey a sense of speed (quickly), excitement (crazily,
eagerly) and inevitability (irrevocably).

- The poem is an address to another person and this is achieved through the use of directive verbs. 12 of the
verbs in the poem take this form (listen, look, come (x2), run (x2), jump, shout, laugh, dance, cry, sing).
Directives can be used for commanding, inviting, warning, etc.

In '(listen)' they appear to be used (1) to plead with, and to urge the addressee to join in with, the speaker's
celebration of Spring, and (2) to share in, and contribute to, his feelings of happiness.

2-Deviation

1- Graphological: the most striking aspect of deviation in '(listen)' is the almost constant use of lower case
letters where we would normally expect capitals. The word 'Spring' in line 19 is an important concept in the
poem, since it is the first word we come across with initial capitalisation.

Likewise, the final line of the poem [31] is heavily foregrounded by each word beginning with a capital letter.
This emphasises the idea being expressed here; namely that nothing (least of all poetry) and nobody is able to
stop the progression of Spring or the poet's love for his addressee - not even conventionally powerful people
such as policemen.

2- Grammatical deviations: Many of these occur through the use of punctuation where it would not normally
be necessary. So, for instance, we get phrases being bracketed where there is

no grammatical need, in order to express the notion of two events happening at the same time. An example
would be in lines 12 and 13 - 'o-p-e-n-i-n-g/are(leaves;flowers)dreams'. Here, the bracketed part of line 13
seems to mean that leaves and flowers are physically opening at the same time as the poet's dreams are opening
metaphorically.

3- -Semantic deviation- dreams cannot actually open and so this part of the line is foregrounded too, possibly
to suggest that with the arrival of Spring the speaker becomes more aware of his dreams and aspirations.

Doing Stylistics: An Analysis of '(listen)' by E. E. Cummings