Lecture #1 General notes on style and stylistics: Style and stylistics. Stylistics and its tasks

Lecture #1
General notes on style and stylistics:
1. Style and stylistics.
2. Stylistics and its tasks.

1.The subject of stylistics has so far not been definitely outlined. It will not be an exaggeration to say that among the various branches of General Linguistics the most obscure in content is un­doubtedly stylistics. This is due to a number of reasons.

First of all there is confusion between the terms s t y I c and s t yl i s t i c s. The first concept is so broad that it is hardly possible to regard it as a term. We speak of style in architecture, 'literature, behaviour, linguistics, dress and in other fields of human activity.
Even in linguistics the word style is used so widely that it needs interpretation. The majority of linguists who deal with the subject of style agree that the term applies to the following fields of investi­gation: 1) the aesthetic function of language, 2) expressive means in language, 3) synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, 4) emotional colouring in language, 5) a system of special devices called stylistic devices, 6) the splitting of the literary language into separate subsystems called styles, 7) the interrelation between language and thought and 8) the individual manner of an author in making use of language.
The term style is also applied to the teaching of how to write clear­ly, simply and emphatically. This purely utilitarian approach to the problem of style stems from the practical necessity to achieve cor­rectness in writing and avoid ambiguity.
These heterogeneous applications of the word style in linguistics have given rise to different points of view as to what is the domain of stylistics.
There is a widely held view that style is the correspondence be­tween thought and its expression. The notion is based on the assumption that of the two functions of language, viz. communication and expres­sion of ideas,³ the latter finds its proper materialization in strings of sentences specially arranged to convey the ideas and also to get the desired response.
Indeed, every sentence uttered may be characterized from two sides: 1) whether or not the string of language forms expressed is some­thing well-known and therefore easily understood and to some extent predictable, 2) whether or not the string of language forms is built anew; is, as it were, an innovation made on the spur of the moment, which requires a definite effort on the part of the listener to get at the meaning of the utterance¹ and is therefore unpredictable.
In connection with the second function of language, there arises the problem of the interrelation between the thought and its expres­sion. The expression of the thought, the utterance, is viewed from the angle of the kind of relations there may be between the language units and the categories of thinking. The concept of this interrelation has given birth to a number of well-known epigrams and sententious maxims. Here are some which have become a kind of alter ego of the word style.
"Style is a quality of language which communicates precise­ly emotions or thoughts, or a system of emotions or thoughts, peculiar to the author."
"... a true idiosyncrasy of style is the result of an author's success in compelling language to conform to his mode of expe­rience."^:
"Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Mat­ter and expression are parts of one: speaking is a thinking out into language." (Newman)
"As your idea's clear or else obscure, The expression follows, perfect or impure." (Boileau)
Many great minds have made valuable observations on the inter­relation between thought and expression. The main trend in most of these observations may be summarized as follows: the linguistic form of the idea expressed always reflects the peculiarities of the thought. And vice versa, the character of the thought will always in a greater or lesser degree manifest itself in the language forms chosen for the ex­pression of the idea. In this connection the following quotation is in­teresting:
"To finish and complete your thought! ...How long it takes, how rare it is, what an immense delight! ...As soon as a thought has reached its full perfection, the word springs into being,
offers itself, and clothes the thought." (Joubert)
That thought and expression are inseparable from each other is a well-established fact. But to regard this as the true essence of style is misleading, in as much as what is mainly a psychological problem has been turned into a linguistic one.
However, although the inseparability of thought and expression is mainly the domain of logic and psychology, it must not be completely excluded from the observation of a stylicist. The character of the inter­relation between the thought and its expression may sometimes ex­plain the author's preference for one language form over another.
The linguistic problem of thought and expression, mistakenly re­ferred to as one of the problems of style, has given rise to another in­terpretation of the word style. The term is applied to the system of idiosyncrasies peculiar to one or another writer, and especially to writ­ers who are recognized as possessing an ingenious turn of mind. This generally accepted notion has further contributed to the general confusion as to how it should be understood and applied. It is only lately that the addition of the attributive 'individual' has somehow clarified the notion, though it has not put a stop to further ambiguity.
The term individual style is applied to that sphere of linguistic and literary science which deals with the peculiarities of a writer's individual manner of using language means to achieve the ef­fect he desires. Deliberate choice must be distinguished from a habit­ual idiosyncrasy in the use of language units; every individual has his own manner of using them. Manner is not individual style inasmuch as the word style presupposes a deliberate choice. In order to distinguish something that is natural from something that is the result of long
and perhaps painful experience, two separate terms must be used, otherwise the confusion will grow deeper.
When Buffon coined his famous saying which, due to its epigrammatical form, became a by-word all over the world: "Style is the man himself" — he had in mind those qualities of speech which are inher­ent and which reveal a man's breeding, education, social standing, etc. All this is undoubtedly interwoven with individual style. A man's breeding and education will always tell on his turn of mind and there­fore will naturally be revealed in his speech and writing. However a definite line of demarcation must be drawn between that which is deliberately done, in other words, that which is the result of the writer's choice and, on the other hand, that which comes natural as an idiosyncrasy of utterance.
Correspondingly, let us agree to name individual choice of language means, particularly in writing, individual style and inherent, natural idiosyncrasies of speech individual m a n n e r Individual style is sometimes identified with style in general. This, as has already been pointed out, is the result of the general con­fusion as to the meaning and application of the term style.
The notion of individual style extends much beyond the domain of linguistics. It is here that the two separate branches of human know­ledge, literature and linguistics come to grips in the most peculiar form. A writer's world outlook is one of the essential constituents of his individual style. But world outlook cannot be included in the field of language investigation. Likewise the literary compositional design of a writer's work cannot be subjected to linguistic analysis, although this is also one of the constituents of a writer's individual style. It follows then that individual style cannot be analysed without an un­derstanding of these and other component parts, which are not purely linguistic. Therefore Middleton Murry justly arrives at the conclusion that "... to judge style primarily by an analysis of language is almost on a level with judging a man by his clothes."
Nevertheless analysis of an author's language seems to be the most important aspect in estimating his individual style. That this is a fact is not only because the language reflects to a very considerable extent the idea of the work as a whole, but because writers unwittingly con­tribute greatly to establishing the system and norms of the literary language of a given period. In order to compel the language to serve his purpose, the writer draws on its potential resources in a way which is impossible in ordinary speech.
The essential property of a truly individual style is its permanence. It has great powers of endurance. It is easily remembered and there­fore yields itself to repetition. Due to the careful selection of language forms it is easily recognizable. Moreover, the form of the work, or in other words, the manner of using the language in which the ideas are wrought, assumes far greater significance than in any other style of language. It is sometimes even considered as something independent of meaning, i.e. of any idea. There are some critics who maintain that form is of paramount importance, and that in proper situations it can generate meaning.
Leaving aside exaggeration of this kind, it is however necessary to point out that in belles-lettres manner of expression may contrib­ute considerably to the meaning of the smaller units in writing (phrase, sentence, paragraph). This will be shown later when we come to analyse the linguistic nature and functions of stylistic devices.
In one of his critical essays V. G. Belinsky suggested a separate term for individual style — the Russian word слог. Unfortunate­ly, however, no new term has been coined in English. Hence the ever­growing confusion caused by the various uses of one and the same term for different concepts.
Selection, or deliberate choice of language, which we hold to be the main distinctive feature of individual style, inevitably brings up the question of norms.
In the literary language the norm is the invariant of the phone­mic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns in circulation dur­ing a given period in the development of the given language. Variants of these patterns may sometimes diverge from the invariant, but never sufficiently to become unrecognizable or misleading. The devel­opment of any literary language shows that the variants (of the levels enumerated above) will always centre around the axis of the invariant forms. The variants, as the term itself suggests, will never detach them­selves from the invariant to such a degree as to claim entire independ­ence. Yet, nevertheless, there is a tendency to estimate the value of individual style by the degree it violates the norms of the language.
"It is in the breach or neglect of the rules that govern the structure of clauses, sentences, and paragraphs that the real secret of style consists, and to illustrate this breach or obser­vation is less easy", writes George Saintsbury.
Quite a different point of view is expressed by E. Sapir, who states that
"...the greatest — or shall we say the most satisfying-literary artists, the Shakespeares and Heines, are those who have known subconsciously how to fit or trim the deeper intuition to the provincial accents of their daily speech. In them there is no effect or strain. Their personal "intuition" appears as a com­pleted synthesis of the absolute art of intuition and the innate, specialized art of the linguistic medium."
The problem of variants or deviations from the norms of the liter­ary language has long been under observation. It is the inadequacy of the concept norm that causes controversy. At every period in the development of a literary language there must, be a tangible norm which first of all marks the difference between literary and non-liter­ary language. A too rigorous adherence to the norm brands the writer's language as bookish, no matter whether it is a question of speech or writing. But on the other hand, neglect of the norm will always be re­garded with suspicion as being an attempt to violate the established signals of the language code which facilitate and accelerate the process of communication. The freer the handling of the norms the more difficult is the exchange of thoughts and ideas.
The use of variants to the norms accepted at a given stage of lan­guage development is not only permissible but to a very considerable extent indispensable. Variants interacting with invariants will guar­antee the potentialities of the language for enrichment to a degree which no artificial coinage will ever be able to reach.
The norm of the language always presupposes a recognized or received standard, hi the same time it likewise presuppos­es vacillations from the received standard. The problem, therefore, is to establish the range of permissible vacillations.
There is a constant process of gradual change taking place in the forms and meaning of the forms of language at any given period in the development of the language. It is therefore most important to under­stand the received standard of the given period in the language in order to comprehend the direction of its further progress.
Some people think that one has to possess what is called a feeling for the language in order to be able to understand the norm of the lan­guage and its possible variants. But it is not so much the feeling of the language as the knowledge of the laws of its functioning and of its history which counts.
When the feeling of the norm, which grows with the knowledge of the laws of the language, is instilled in the mind, one begins to appre­ciate the beauty of justifiable fluctuations. But the norm can be grasped and established only when there are deviations from it. It is therefore best perceived in combination with something that breaks it.
In this connection the following lines from L. V. Scherba's work «Спорные вопросы русской грамматики» are worth quoting:
"... in order to achieve a free command of a literary lan­guage, even one's own, one must read widely, giving preference to those writers who deviate but slightly from the norm."
"Needless to say, all deviations are to some extent normal­ized: not every existing deviation from the norm is good; at any rate, not in all circumstances. The feeling for what is permis­sible and what is not, and mainly—a feeling for the inner sense of these deviations (and senseless ones, as has been pointed out, are naturally bad), is developed through an extensive study of our great Russian literature in all its variety, but of course in its best examples."¹
Naturally, there are no writers who do not deviate from the estab­lished norms of the language — they would be unbearably tedious if there were. Only when the feeling of the norm is well developed, does one begin to feel the charm of motivated deviations from the norm. Then L. V. Scherba adds an explanation which throws light on the problem of deviation from the norm from the point of view of the conditions under which a deviation may take place:
"I say justifiable or 'motivated' because bad writers frequent­ly make use of deviations from the norm which are not mo­tivated or justified by the subject matter — that is why they are considered bad writers."²
N. J. Shvedova in her interesting article on the interrelation be­tween the general and the individual in the language of a writer states:
out concentration of the expressive means of the common language, which have undergone special literary treatment: it is a reflection of the common language of the given period, but a prismatic reflection, in which the language units have been selected and combined individually, their interrelation being seen through the prism of the writer's world outlook, his aim and his skill. The language of a writer reflects the tendencies of the common language."
What we call here individual style, therefore, is a unique combina­tion of the language units, expressive means and stylistic devices of a language peculiar to a given writer, which makes that writer's works or utterances easily recognizable. Hence individual style may be lik­ened to a proper name. It has a nominal character. It is based on a thorough knowledge of the contemporary literary language and of ear­lier periods in its development as well. It allows certain deviations from the established norms. This, needless to say, presupposes a per­fect knowledge of the invariants of the norms. Individual style requires to be studied in a course of stylistics in so far as it makes use of the potentialities of language means, whatever the character of these potentialities may be.
Another commonly accepted connotation of the term style is embellishment of language. This concept is popular and is upheld in some of the scientific papers on literary criticism. Language and style are regarded as separate bodies. Language can easily dispense with style, which is likened to the trimming on a dress. Moreover, style as an embellishment of language is viewed as something that hinders understanding. It is alien to language and therefore is identified with falsehood. In its extreme, style may dress the thought in such fancy attire that one can hardly get at the idea hidden behind the elaborate design of tricky stylistic devices.
This notion presupposes the use of bare language forms deprived of any stylistic devices, of any expressive means deliberately employed.
In this connection Middleton Murry writes:
"The notion that style is applied ornament had its origin, no doubt, in the tradition of the school of rhetoric in Europe, and in its place in their teaching. The conception was not so monstrous as it is today. For the old professors of rhetoric were exclusively engaged in instructing their pupils how to expound an argument or arrange a pleading. Their classification of rhe­torical devices was undoubtedly formal and extravagant... The conception of style as applied ornament... is the most pop­ular of all delusions about style."
Perhaps it is due to this notion that the word "style" itself still bears a somewhat derogatory meaning. It is associated with the idea of something pompous, showy, artificial, something that is set against simplicity, truthfulness, the natural. Shakespeare was a determined enemy of all kinds of embellishments of language.
To call style embellishment of language is to add further ambi­guity to the already existing confusion,
A very popular notion among practical linguists, teachers of lan­guage, is that style is the technique of expression. In this sense style is generally defined as the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to interest the reader. Though the last requirement is not among the indispensables, it is still found in many practical manuals on style. Style in this utilitarian sense should be taught, but it belongs to the realm of grammar, and not to stylistics. It is sometimes, and more correctly, called composition. Style as the technique of expression studies the normalised forms of the language. It sets up a number of rules as to how to speak and write, and discards all kinds of deviations as being violations of the norm. The norm itself becomes rigid, self-sustained and, to a very great ex­tent, inflexible.
Herbert Spencer¹ writes:
"... there can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagina­tion and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetori­cal precepts needless. He who daily hears and reads well-framed sentences, will naturally more or less tend to use similar ones.'"²
The utilitarian approach to the problem is also felt in the following statement by E. J. Dunsany, an Irish dramatist and writer of short stories:
"When you can with difficulty write anything clearly, sim­ply, and emphatically, then, provided that the difficulty is not apparent to the reader, that is style. When you can do it easily, that is genius."
V. G. Belinsky also distinguished two aspects of style, making a hard and fast distinction between the technical and the creative power of any utterance.
"To language merits belong correctness, clearness and fluen­cy," he states, "qualities which can be achieved by any talent­less writer by means of labour and routine."
"But style (слог) — is talent itself, the very thought."
In traditional Russian linguistics there are also adherents of this utilitarian approach to the problem of style. For¹ instance, Prof. Gvozdev thinks that "Stylistics has a practical value, teaching students to master the language, working out a conscious approach to language".¹
In England there are in fact two schools of stylistics — the one represented by Prof. Middleton Murry whom we have already cited and the other, that of Prof. Lucas. Prof. Murry regards style as indi­vidual form of expression. Prof. Lucas considers style from the purely practical aspect. He states that the aims of a course in style are:
"a) to teach to write and speak well, b) to improve the style of the writer, and c) to show him means of improving his abili­ty to express his ideas".
It is important to note that what we here call the practical approach to the problem of style should not be regarded as something erroneous. It is quite a legitimate concept of the general theory of style. However, the notion of style cannot be reduced to the merely practical aspect because in this case a theoretical background, which is a verified foun­dation for each and every practical understanding, will never be worked out.
Just as the relations between lexicology and lexicography are ac­cepted to be those of theory and practice, so theoretical and practical stylistics should be regarded as two interdependent branches of lin­guistic science. Each of these branches may develop its own methods of investigation and approach to linguistic data.
The term style also signifies a literary genre. Thus we speak of classical style or the style of classicism; realistic style; the style of romanticism and so on. On the other hand, the term is widely used in literature, being applied to the various kinds of literary work, the fable, novel, ballad, story, etc. Thus we speak of a story being written in the style of a fable or we speak of the characteristic fea­tures of the epistolary style or the essay and so on.
In this application of the term, the arrangement of what are purely literary facts is under observation; for instance, the way the plot is dealt with, the arrangement of the parts of the literary composition to form the whole, the place and the role of the author in describing and depicting events.
In some of these features, which are characteristic of a literary com­position, the purely literary and purely linguistic overlap, thus mak­ing the composition neither purely linguistic nor purely literary. This however is inevitable. The fact that the lines of demarcation are blurred makes the contrast between the extremes more acute, and therefore requires the investigator to be cautious when dealing with borderline cases.
Finally there is one more important application of the term style. We speak of the different styles of language.