Types of Stylistics

Evaluative Stylistics:

• Evaluative Stylistics:
• This is a term used by Richard Bradfordto designate the type of analysis which uses linguistic tools to assess or measure the worth or merits and demerits of a text.
• It assumes that the quality of a text is revealed in the quality of language patterns it employs.
• Such analyses may involve the juxtaposition of two or more texts for comparative evaluation.

Discourse Stylistics:

• Discourse Stylistics:
• This is the stylistic approach which employs the procedures and terminology of discourse analysis in the explication of literary language use.
• Ronald Carter explains it this way:
• (DS) operates under the direct influence of work in pragmatics, discourse analysis and text linguistics, and this work continues to provide the field of stylistics with increasingly sophisticated means of discussing both longer stretches of text and, indeed, longer texts….

Discourse Stylistics:

• Discourse Stylistics:
• In the basic elementary definition, it is the application of discourse analysis to literature.
• Thus, an advantage of the discourse analysis approach is that it enables us to study longer stretches of language beyond sentences, which traditional linguistics may not reach.
• Such terms as “cohesion,” “coherence,” “location,” “perlocution,” “maxim,”“implicature,” “speech acts,” etc which are regular in pure discourse analysis are employed in literary explication.

Contextualist Stylistics:

• Contextualist Stylistics:
•  This has various factions that are united in their emphasis on the ways in which literary style is formed and influenced by its contexts.
• These involve
• (1) the competence and disposition of the reader
• (2) the prevailing socio-cultural forces that dominate all linguistic discourse, including literature; and …