Computational Stylistics:
This is a subdiscipline of computational linguistics. It evolved in the 1960s and involves the use of statistics and other data that are readily generated by the computer to treat different problems of style. In the area of “stylometry,” the computer is used to generate data on the types, number and length of words and sentences which aid the stylistician in his study of texts, ensuring the objectivity required. Such data from different texts may even be used for comparative purposes as well as for the authentification of authorship. For example, stylometric data may be used to determine which author a piece of disputed writing belongs to according to whether the stylometric data in it conform to stylometric data already associated with the author. The risk here are that it forecloses the possibility of an author changing his style from text to text and the possibility of two authors writing alike.
Expressive Stylistics:
This approach is often considered “old-fashioned” in seemingly upholding the view “Stylus virum arguit” (“The style proclaims the man,” that is the author).14 This approach emphasizes an identification of how the style, the linguistic elements, reveal the personality or “soul” of the author. It pursues the belief that the artists employ language to express their inner selves. Thus, there is the concept of style as idiolect, that each language user has some linguistic traits that not only mark him/her out but also expresses his/her personality. The obvious weakness of this approach is the probability that writers change their personality and language over time and text and that a change in one does not necessarily accompany a change in the other.
Pedagogical Stylistics:
This refers to the employment of stylistic analysis for teaching and learning purposes. Literary texts may sometimes be difficult for learners to appreciate. Hence, a teacher may analyse the linguistic patterns in the text, breaking down complex linguistic units to smaller ones, converting excerpts in verse form prosaic form, hyperbaton (syntactic inversion) to regular forms in the belief that such will help the learner to grasp the message therein. Wales remarks on this as follows: Because of its eclecticism, stylistics has increasingly come to be used as a teaching tool in language and literature studies for both native and foreign speakers of English; what can be termed pedagogical stylistics. Carter and McRae claim that stylistics in its pedagogical application “has been accused of tending towards the simplistic” (xxxi). However, since the aim of teaching and learning is to make things clearer or simpler than they seem, pedagogical stylistics would be considered a positive development.15
Radical Stylistics:
This is a term introduced by D. Burton in 1982 to designate a stylistic approach which tends to go beyond the identification of the artistic effects of language use to analyse how language is used to express different ideologies of world views. The radical stylistician is interested in the choice of linguistic patterns to reflect such ideological slants as communism, socialism, capitalism, welfarism, etc. Thus, the stylistician attempts to discover in the text certain jargons associated with such ideologies. This is allied to sociological criticism. The label suggests that such an analyst would have a passion for the reflection or rejection of an ideological bias.
New Stylistics:
This is a rather vague term used to denote some fresh models of stylistic analysis. Such models cease to be “new” as soon as “newer” models evolve. For example, Leo Spitzer’s ideas about stylistics as one of its originators in Western Europe were considered “new.” However, the term is often applied more consistently to the studies in the West from the 1970s which employed the latest principles of structuralism, poetics and reader response criticism in the analysis of literary texts.
From the foregoing, it is obvious that while there are different approaches or types of stylistic analysis, there are several overlaps between many and the dividing line between some is rather thin. Accordingly, it may not be satisfactory or convenient for a stylistician to be rigid on a particular type to employ. Indeed, stylistics being a multidisciplinary discipline often adopts an eclectic orientation. Thus, in the analysis of a particular text, a stylistician may employ more than one tool or approach depending on the data that is evident in the text, the analyst’s resourcefulness in his or her range of reference for the identification of evidence and interpretation of such evidence.
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