Stylistics facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Stylistics is like being a language detective! It's a part of applied linguistics, which is the study of how language is used in real life. Stylistics looks closely at all kinds of texts and spoken words to understand their unique style.

What is "style" in language? It's the special way someone uses language, or how language is used in different situations. For example, you might use everyday language (called the vernacular) when talking to friends. But you'd use more formal language, with careful grammar and word choices (lexicon), when writing a job application or speaking in an interview.

Stylistics connects literary criticism (studying books) with linguistics (studying language). It helps us understand not just books and poems, but also journalism, advertising, news, and even how people talk in popular culture or in politics. It shows that even everyday texts can be interesting to study!

Stylistics tries to figure out why people and groups choose certain ways to use language. This includes studying different types of writing (like genre), folk art, and how people speak in different dialects or situations (called registers). It's also used in discourse analysis, which looks at how language works in conversations and longer pieces of writing.

Some common features that show style are using dialogue (people talking), regional accents, and individual ways of speaking (called idiolects). The length of sentences and the type of language register used also show style.

How Stylistics Started
Stylistics in Recent Times
Stylistics in Literature
See also

How Stylistics Started

Studying the style of writing goes way back to ancient times, with something called classical rhetoric. But the modern way of studying stylistics began in the early 1900s with groups like Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle.

In 1909, a person named Charles Bally suggested that stylistics should be its own subject. He felt that Saussure's way of studying language didn't fully explain how people express themselves. Bally's ideas fit well with what the Prague School was trying to do.

The Prague School took ideas from the Russian Formalists. They focused on "foregrounding," which means making poetic language stand out from everyday language. This happens when language is used in an unusual way (deviation) or when patterns are repeated (parallelism). However, the Prague School also believed that what counts as "everyday language" changes over time. So, the line between poetic and everyday language is always moving.

Stylistics in Recent Times

Roman Jakobson was a key figure in both the Russian Formalists and the Prague School. He later moved to America. In 1958, he gave an important speech that brought together Russian Formalism and American New Criticism. This speech, published in 1960 as Linguistics and Poetics, is often seen as the first clear explanation of stylistics. Jakobson argued that studying poetic language should be a part of linguistics. He even described the "poetic function" as one of six main ways language works.

Michael Halliday is another important person in British stylistics. His 1971 study, Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William Golding's The Inheritors is a very important essay. Halliday helped explain the idea of register. This term helps us understand how language changes based on the situation.

Halliday said that register is different from dialect. A dialect is the usual way a person speaks because of where they live or their social group. A register, however, describes the choices a speaker makes based on three things:

Field: What people are doing or talking about (like discussing a specific topic).
Tenor: Who is involved in the conversation (like talking to a friend versus a teacher).
Mode: How the language is being used (like writing an email versus giving a speech).

Different topics (fields) lead to different words, especially in vocabulary. The linguist David Crystal noted that Halliday's "tenor" is similar to the word "style." Halliday's "mode" also includes the genre of the text, which is like a pre-set way of using language for certain types of writing or speaking. The linguist William Downes said that registers are usually easy to spot and recognize.

Stylistics in Literature

In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Crystal mentions that most stylistic studies have focused on the complex and important language found in literature. This is often called 'literary stylistics'. He also says that sometimes these studies focus too much on the unusual or "deviant" parts of literary language, rather than looking at the bigger picture of how language is used in whole texts. For example, the short, intense language of poetry often reveals its secrets more easily to a stylistician than the language in plays or novels.

Studying Poetry Style

Besides common language styles, there are also unusual ones, with poetry being the most obvious. In Practical Stylistics, HG Widdowson looked at the traditional form of an epitaph, which is writing found on gravestones. For example:

His memory is dear today

As in the hour he passed away.

(Ernest C. Draper 'Ern'. Died 4.1.38)

Widdowson points out that these sayings are often not very exciting. But he also recognizes that they are a real attempt to show feelings of loss and remember a loved one. What makes this language poetic might not be the words themselves, but where they are placed. The verse might seem more special because it's in a serious place like a graveyard. Widdowson suggests that, unlike words carved in stone, poetry is unusual language that connects to many other texts and ideas.

Two challenges when studying poetry stylistically are noted by PM Wetherill. First, focusing too much on one feature might make you miss other important ones. Second, just seeing a text as a collection of stylistic parts might make you ignore other ways meaning is created.

Hidden Meanings (Implicature)

In 'Poetic Effects', the linguist Adrian Pilkington talks about "implicature." This is when a speaker or writer suggests something without saying it directly. Implicature can be "strong" (clearly implied) or "weak" (more open to interpretation).

Pilkington's "poetic effects" are those that create many weak implicatures. This means the reader can find a wide range of possible meanings. However, it can be hard to tell exactly where the speaker's intended meaning ends and the reader's own interpretation begins. As Pilkington says, "there is no clear cut-off point between assumptions which the speaker certainly endorses and assumptions derived purely on the hearer's responsibility." The stylistic qualities of poetry also help us understand these hidden meanings.

How Tense is Used

Widdowson points out that in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798), the mystery of the Mariner's sudden appearance is kept alive by a unique use of tense. For example, the Mariner "holds" the wedding-guest in the present tense, then lets go in the past tense ("...his hands dropt he."). But then he holds him again with his "glittering eye" in the present tense. This changing tense keeps the reader wondering.

Why Poetry Matters

Widdowson notes that when you summarize poetry, it often sounds like very simple ideas, such as "nature is beautiful," "love is great," or "life is lonely." But when you read lines like:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end ...

William Shakespeare, '60'.

Or:

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days months, which are the rags of time ...

John Donne, 'The Sun Rising', Poems (1633)

This kind of language gives us a fresh way to look at familiar ideas. It helps us see them without our usual personal or social biases. So, even if we use common words like 'love' or 'heart', placing them in a new way allows the poet to truly express human feelings. This, in part, is what stylistics helps us understand, and according to Widdowson, this is the main reason poetry is important.