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2.1 The real purposes of Stylistic analysis.
Some scholars claim that stylistics is a comparatively new branch of linguistics, which has only a few decades of intense linguistic interest behind it. The term stylistics really came into existence not too long ago.
The problem that makes the definition of stylistics a curious one deals both with the object and material of studies. Another problem has to do with a whole set of special linguistic means that create what we call ‘style’. Style may be belles–letters or scientific or neutral or low colloquial or archaic or pompous, or a combination of those. Style may also be typical of a certain writer – Shakespearean style, Dickensian style, etc. There is the style of the press, the style of official documents, the style of social etiquette and even an individual style of a speaker or writer – his idiolect.
Some linguists consider that the word “style” and the subject of linguistic stylistics are confined to the study of the effects of the message, its impact on the reader. Stylistics in this case is regarded as a language science which deals with the results of the act of communication.
Stylistics deals with styles. Different scholars have defined style differently at different times. Out of this variety we shall quote the most representative ones.
In 1971 Prof. I.R. Galperin offered his definition of style ‘as a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication.
According to Prof. Y.M. Skrebnev, whose book on stylistics was published in 1994, ‘style is what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts (an individual text) from all groups (other texts) … Style can be roughly defined as the peculiarity, the set of specific features of a text type or of a specific text.’
All these definitions point out the systematic and functionally determined character of the notion of style.
The authors of handbooks on German, English and Russian stylistics published in our country over the recent decades propose more or less analogous system of styles based on a broad subdivision of all styles into two classes: literary and colloquial and their varieties. These generally include from three to five functional styles.In linguistics the purpose of close analysis is to identify and classify the elements of language being used.In literary studies the purpose is usually an adjunct to understanding and interpretation.In both cases, an extremely detailed and scrupulous attention is paid to the text.
Stylistic analysis is a normal part of literary studies. It is practiced as a part of understanding the possible meanings in a text.
It is also generally assumed that the process of analysis will reveal the good qualities of the writing. Let’s take, for example, the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
A stylistic analysis might reveal the following points:
– the play is written in poetic blank verse
– that is – unrhymed, iambic pentameters
– the stresses fall as follows:
Now is the winter of our discontent
(notice that the stress falls on vowel sounds)
the first line is built on a metaphor
the condition of England is described in terms of the season ‘winter’
the term ‘our’ is a form of the royal “we”
the seasonal metaphor is extended into the second line
…where better conditions become ‘summer’
the metaphor is extended even further by the term ‘sun’
it is the sun which appears, ‘causing’ the summer
but ‘sun’ is here also a pun – on the term ‘son’
…which refers to the son of the King
‘York’ is a metonymic reference to the Duke of York
+In a complete analysis, the significance of these stylistic details would be related to the events of the play itself, and to Shakespeare’s presentation of them.
In some forms of stylistic analysis, the numerical recurrence of certain stylistic features is used to make judgements about the nature and the quality of the writing.
However, it is important to recognise that the concept of style is much broader than just the ‘good style’ of literary prose. For instance, even casual communication such as a manner of speaking or a personal letter might have an individual style. However, to give a detailed account of this style requires the same degree of linguistic analysis as literary texts.
There are several varieties of style Russian language, among them - colloquial, official-business, artistic. There are two more methods of narration. This is scientific and journalistic styles. For a clear formulation of one's own thoughts, it is important to be able to choose the right words that can accurately convey the meaning invested in them. For students of lower grades, this is a rather difficult task, since they do not yet fully possess this ability. Even more difficult for them is the task of presenting the read, because it requires the observance of the language tools used by its author. Stylistic analysis of the text greatly facilitates its reproduction.
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