Week 1
notes
What
is stylistics?
Stylistics
can generally be considered to be the study of literary texts with a sharp
concern for how the language element works in these texts. It is therefore one
of many different approaches to literary texts, in our case dramatic texts.
There are, for example, approaches that focus on sociological, psychological or
historical aspects of dramatic texts. Stylistics is different from ‘practical
criticism’ in that there is a belief that some rigour (in terms of description,
terminology, explicitness, etc.) is necessary — partly in the interest of
scholarship, but also because this will help the reader in reproducing
some of the procedures to other texts. The approach, therefore, contrasts with
the Leavisite approach.
Charles Bally published a two-volume
treatise on French stylistics (entitled Traité
de Stylistique Française)
in 1909. His concern was to describe the ‘affective’ aspects of language:
‘subjective but private feelings, attitudes, motives, perspectives, etc.’. Interest spread across continental
The rise of stylistics is also
related to the practical criticism method in literary criticism. Wimsatt and Beardsley’s essays, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’
and ‘The Affective Fallacy’ (1946) questioned the widespread reference to
influences and biographical details when criticising literary works. They felt
that dwelling on influences and biographical details allowed the critic to
almost totally ignore the text itself, and so the push was for there to be more
‘close readings’ (or explication de texte or
‘practical criticism’). The critical movement advocated (as stylistics did) a formalist
approach. A strong distinction was made between what was textual and
what was extra-textual. Extra-textual matters include biographical
details, the author’s intention, or socio-historical and cultural influences.
What was textual was what was found on the page itself. In fact, this kind of
stylistics, known as pedagogical stylistics, is often useful in teaching
literature to foreign- and second-language learners, in that it allows pupils
to tease out meaning from the text itself without making the pupil feel
threatened by lack of ‘background’ information.
However, stylistics is, by
definition inter-disciplinary. In that it purports to deal with literary
texts, it has links with literary criticism and critical theory. In that it
believes that there needs to be some theoretical framework and fairly rigorous
methodology, it has links with linguistics and possibly sociology. This means
that stylistics has to take into account of developments in linguistics. As
linguistic descriptions take into account notions of context, and move beyond
the level of the sentence, more tools are made available for stylistic
analyses.
Stylistics draws upon theories
and models from other fields more frequently than it develops its own unique
theories. This is because it is at a point of confluence of many
sub-disciplines of linguistics, and other disciplines such as literary studies
and psychology, drawing upon these (sub-)disciplines
but not seeking to duplicate or replace them. This versatility of approach and
open-mindedness are, of course, characteristic of the humanities in general.
Instead, it takes a particular view of the process of communication which places the text at the centre of its
concerns, whilst being interested in the relationship between writer and text,
and the reader and text, as well as the wider contexts of production and
reception of texts. (Jeffries & McIntyre 2010: 3, my emphasis)
If you
are approaching stylistics with a background in literature, consider the
following questions:
§ How do
you currently go about carrying out an analysis of a literary text?
§ Is the
kind of analysis you currently do satisfactory?
§ Is
there anything that you find difficult about the study of literature?
If, on the other hand, you are approaching stylistics from a background
in language study, think about the questions below:
§ What
constitutes data in the area of language study that you are most used to?
§ How do
you proceed when investigating a particular issue in the area of language study
with which you are most familiar?
§ Which
of the questions that arise in the study of the data you most frequently use do
you find difficult to answer?
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Preliminary
task Imagine
you’ve been given the following passage (you probably know it), and you’re
asked to answer the question: what does it mean? Alternatively,
imagine you’re the English teacher to a class of 15-year-olds. What would you
tell your pupils? In
both scenarios, what additional information would you like to know?
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Linguistics
·
Phonology is the study of how pronunciation
operates in particular languages.
·
Graphology is the study of the writing system,
also known as orthography — it includes spelling, punctuation, capitalisation,
handwriting style, etc.
·
Grammar is the study of the form of the
language (as opposed to the sound, writing, or meaning system of the language).
Grammar itself can be subdivided in syntax (sentence structure) and morphology
(word structure).
·
Morphology is the study about the structure or
organisation of words into morphemes — the ‘roots’ (‘stems’) and affixes. A
morpheme is the smallest distinctive unit of grammatical analysis. The word gleeful
contains two morphemes: glee (the ‘root’), and ful
(the affix); the word advantage contains one morpheme only.
·
Syntax is the study of the structure or
organisation of sentences into clauses, phrases and words. There is concern,
for example, on how the information is focused in a sentence, or on how the
words are ordered.
·
Discourse Analysis is a term that is not very
clearly defined — some use it to refer to the organisation above the sentence
level (e.g., how sentences are organised into paragraphs); some focus on spoken
discourse (as opposed to written text). In TS4213, we shall use the term discourse
to refer to bits or stretches of language including the context to which the
language is used (who said/wrote what to whom, when, why?). We can therefore
restrict the term text for the ‘written record’ of spoken or written discourse.
·
Semantics is that aspect of linguistics that
formally studies the meaning aspects of language — specifically of words and
sentences, without necessarily taking into account the context in which they
are used.
·
Pragmatics is the study of utterances as opposed
to sentences. Each single instantiation of a sentence constitutes a different
utterance. For example, I can say, ‘It’s late’ when my friend suggests that we
go out for a drink. The next day, I can say ‘It’s late’ to my wife after being
at a dinner party for several hours. I have said the same sentence, but I have
made two utterances. The first utterance might mean ‘No, I can’t go out with
you now’; whereas the second might mean ‘My dear, I think it’s time we
considered going home’. Pragmatics is therefore concerned with utterance
meaning, and attempts to relate the form and sentence meaning systematically to
the context.
This
can be summarised as follows. Given that we are interested in dramatic
discourse, our reliance on linguistics will be mainly from pragmatics
and discourse analysis.
Linguistics
|
|
SUBSTANCE |
FORM |
MEANING
|
SITUATION
|
|
Spoken
Language
|
phonology |
grammar (morphology
and syntax) |
semantics |
pragmatics
(discourse analysis)
|
|
Written
Language
|
graphology,
orthography
|
(All
the words have one morpheme each except for went: go + [past tense].)
Semiology/Semiotics
I
make no distinction between semiology and semiotics. The former
is favoured especially in
Human language is one example of a
sign system; but it is not the only method of communication. Apart from
language, people can also communicate by facial expressions and gestures (body
language), or through their accents (normally considered paralanguage because
although it is not a linguistic element, it accompanies language), or through
the kinds of clothes they wear (obvious examples would be the wearing of school
ties, football club colours, or wearing ‘mourning colours’, or a man not
wearing a tie at a formal function), or the style or colour of ones hair. The study of visual communication is normally
known as kinesics.
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857–1913) introduced a terminological distinction which has
exercised a major influence on subsequent linguistic discussion: signifiant (or ‘signifier’, or ‘significans’)
was contrasted with signifié (or ‘concept
signified’, ‘significatum’).
For
the most part (in language), the relationship between the signifiant
and the signifié is arbitrary. Exceptions
would be onomatopoeic words (like ring or mew).
Other kinds of symbols might be less
arbitrary. In the work of Charles Peirce (1931–58), there are three major types
of signs: an icon is a signifiant which
resembles in its form the signifié; an index
is a signifiant which is related to the
signifié in terms of
contiguity or proximity or causality; a symbol is a signifiant
which is arbitrarily related to its signifié.
Examples of icons would include
photographs, certain map and road signs (e.g. the cross-roads symbol, or
T-junction symbol). Examples of indices include thunder and lightning
(indicating storm), smoke (indicating fire), spots (indicating measles, chicken
pox, etc.), a person staggering (indicating drunkenness or exhaustion), a
person stuttering (indicating nervousness). Stage performances therefore rely
partly on indexical signs for communicating to the audience information about
the characters, etc.
The
notion of indexicality
has also been used more generally than the way employed by Peirce. It refers to
how there can be non-propositional
components of linguistic meaning. This notion is useful for stylistics.
Compare
the 1930s British traffic sign for a school and a contemporary one. How are
they different?
The
stylistics of drama is therefore a semiotic approach to dramatic texts,
which focuses on the linguistic elements of the text (but should also be
cognisant of other elements in the text). It is one of several
possible approaches. It is closely related to ‘practical criticism’, but
prefers an explicit analysis, with clear and unambiguous terminology, supported
by some theoretical framework.
Also,
consider the following poem by George Herbert (1583–1633):
The Altar
A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,
Made of a heart and cemented with tears;
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workman’s tool hath touch’d the same.
A HEART alone
Is such a
stone,
As nothing but
Thy pow’r doth cut.
Wherefore each part
Of my hard
heart
Meets in this frame
To praise thy name.
That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
Oh, let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,
And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.
DISCUSSION
1
How many levels of semiosis can
you discern in George Herbert’s (1593–1633) poem below?
Easter Wings
by George Herbert
Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store, 1
Though foolishly he lost the same, 2
Decaying more and more, 3
Till he became 4
Most poore: 5
With Thee 6
O
let me rise, 7
As larks, harmoniously, 8
And sing this day Thy victories: 9
Then shall the fall further the flight in me. 10
My tender age in sorrow did beginne; 11
And still with sicknesses and shame 12
Thou didst so punish sinne, 13
That I became 14
Most thinne. 15
With Thee 16
Let me combine, 17
And feel this day Thy victorie; 18
For, if I imp my wing on Thine, 19
Affliction shall advance the flight in me. 20
We can examine Widdowson’s
analysis of Frost’s poem.[1][1]
DISCUSSION 2
Let us discuss the poem first.
Here is the poem in full.
Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening[2][2]
Whose woods these are
I think I know. 1
His house is in the
village, though; 2
He will not see me
stopping here 3
To watch his woods
fill up with snow. 4
My little horse must
think it queer 5
To stop without a
farmhouse near 6
Between the woods and
frozen lake 7
The darkest evening
of the year. 8
He gives his harness
bells a shake 9
To ask if there is
some mistake. 10
The only other
sound’s the sweep 11
Of easy wind and
downy flake. 12
The woods are lovely,
dark, and deep, 13
But I have promises
to keep, 14
And miles to go
before I sleep, 15
And miles to go before I
sleep. 16
We
can possibly focus on many kinds of linguistic patterning in this poem — for
example, the rhyme scheme; the alliteration in dark, and deep; the
contrast between the words relating to the man-made elements (house,
village, farmhouse) and the natural elements (woods, snow). Widdowson, among other things, focuses on the pronoun
system (Whose woods, his
house, my little horse, etc.). He suggests that some of the usage is
unusual, and therefore catches his attention, and that this requires
interpretation. He suggests that the poem has as its theme ‘the reality of
social constraints, of rights and obligations, in opposition to that of natural
freedom [symbolised by the wood, wind and snow]’ (p. 121).
We can trace the steps, rough, as
follows.
And
this is fairly typical of most stylistic analyses. We examine the text, look
out for linguistic patterns, and then try to work out the relevance or
significance of the discovered pattern. This then should lead to some sort of
interpretation of the text. The assumption is that the author is trying to communicate
something through the patterns we have discovered. In other words, the
patterns function as a sign — we have to decide how to interpret
the sign (is it iconic, or indexical, or symbolic in Peirce’s sense?). We talked about indexicality earlier: this is
another way to think about significance.
When Widdowson’s
article appeared, Sydney Bolt objected to what he felt to the ‘obvious’ Death
Wish interpretation of the poem:
When
the reader thinks twice about what the last line means [‘And
miles to go before I sleep’], he realises there must be a latent meaning
beneath the manifest one. This reveals itself as a metaphor — ‘a long way to go
before I die’. On re-reading, one now registers the attractive woods as the
Widdowson’s own comment was that this was
‘altogether too weighty a construction to place on this single repetition, and
[he] saw no warrant in the actual text for [this] interpretation’. How then do
we explain the prevalence of this interpretation? It would seem that literary
texts, in particular poetic texts encourage
symbolic readings (and I am using ‘symbolic’ in the general sense now). We can
make the jump from sleep to death through the similarity between
them (an index), and perhaps also through conventional usage (‘he’s gone
to sleep’ = ‘he has died’). But all this is probably reinforced by the
conventions of poetry. My point is that the language element and the contextual
element both figure in the way we come to a conclusion about the text we are
reading, and we can therefore expand our model.
The context of the words
(being found in a poem) therefore allows for this kind of reading, and the word
sleep takes on additional semiotic significance. Our model of stylistics
then should therefore encompass contextual analysis together with linguistic
analysis.
I propose also another extension to
the model. If we bear in mind the Frost poem again, we might also want to say
that the theme or notion of sleep harks back to previous usages
and previous significations of the word sleep. In other words,
words (or even structures) can have histories. The way we use particular words
(or structures) depend on our past, historical experience of the words (or
structures). In general, we can say that if a particular word (or structure)
has a history of being given a particular semiotic signification,
it will subsequently be easier to give that particular semiotic signification.
We might therefore say, for example,
that the Frost poem makes us think of, say, Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’:
Darkling
I listen [to the nightingale]; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with
easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet
breath;
Now
more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the
midnight with no pain,
While thou art
pouring forth thy soul abroad
In
such ecstasy!
Still
wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem
become a sod.
…
Adieu!
adieu! thy plaintive anthem
fades
Past the near meadows, over the
still stream,
Up the
hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In
the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that
music: — Do I wake or sleep?
Keats
makes uses many lexical items to do with, or closely related to, the notion of
death — Death, die, cease, soul, requiem, sod, buried. He also uses
lexical items to do with sleep — dream, sleep. The reader is thus
encouraged to make the connexion between sleep and death. A reader may
therefore allow this other text (Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’) colour his/her
interpretation of Frost’s poem. Or, to put it another way, Frost might have
been (consciously or sub-consciously) recalling Keats’s ode whilst writing his
poem. We can say that the text harks back to another text, or that there
is intertextuality — some sort of a connexion between these two texts.
Writers and readers are generally not like, say, computers and have experience
of other texts, and they frequently make use of their experience of other texts
to interpret new texts. Whether the reader recalls Keats’s ode or perhaps even
just the Bible:
As
they were stoning him, Stephen said in invocation, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit.’ Then he knelt down and said aloud, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against
them.’ And with these words he fell asleep. [Acts 7.59–60, The New Jerusalem Bible]
this is a resource that is available for
interpreting texts. We can therefore again extend our model of stylistics to
incorporate this.
It
could well be argued that intertextuality is just another element of the
context; I prefer to keep another box for intertextual analysis merely to
emphasise that this is another important resource for semiotic signification. I
therefore make a three-fold distinction between:
the linguistic
elements
— the actual words and structures;
the
contextual elements
— the surrounding text (or ‘co-text’), who is writing/speaking to whom, when,
where, on what occasion/for what purpose (or the ‘addresser’, ‘addressee’,
‘time’, ‘place’, ‘function/purpose’); and
intertextual elements — the
‘histories’ of words or structures, or how a text can ‘recall’ another text.
I have used double-headed vertical
arrows to indicate that each element can inform on the other elements. I have
also used double-headed horizontal arrows to indicate that the path to
interpretation is not necessarily uni-directional.
One may, for example, be already predisposed to particular lines of
interpretation, and therefore seek out particular elements for semiotic
signification; and in the process of analysing the text one may also modify
one’s original interpretation.
DISCUSSION 3
Examine the following extract
from a contemporary British play.
henry:
Hallo, Henry Bell.
karen:
Henry’s from our accountants. And this is Anthony and Imogen Staxton-Billing.
(She
immediately moves away to the other group.)
henry:
Ah, hallo.
anthony:
(Cursorily) ’Llo.
(They
shake hands.)
henry:
(Turning to imogen)
Hallo, Henry Bell.
(imogen scarcely
looks at him but gives him the most peremptory of greetings and handshakes.)
imogen:
(Glacially) Hallo.
daphne:
Did she say you were an accountant?
henry:
(Defensively) Yes.
daphne:
Oh. (She looks him up and down.) Not local, are you?
henry:
No.
daphne:
Yes, I thought as much. Excuse me, I just want a word
with …
(She
drifts away to the other group.)
henry:
(Charmingly) Of course. (Turning to the staxton-billings) Well. A lot of people to meet all of a sudden.
imogen:
(Ignoring him, to her husband) Did you know she
was going to be here?
anthony:
Who?
imogen:
I’m talking about that little toad, Karen Knightly. Who do you think I’m
talking about?
anthony:
Oh, Karen. That’s who you’re talking about.
(Slight
pause.)
henry:
Did you have far to come?
imogen:
(Ignoring him still) God, you bastard. You let me come to this house and
walk straight in to her. And you never even warned me she’d be here.
anthony:
Oh, do put a cork in it …
imogen:
I mean it’s so cruel, Anthony. Don’t you realise how cruel it is? Don’t you
honestly realise?
anthony:
Oh, God. It’s one of those afternoons, is it?
(He
starts to move away.)
imogen:
Anthony …
anthony:
Goodbye.
(He
goes to talk to daphne
who has joined up with percy. Pause.)
henry:
(Trying again) What’s this committee in aid of
then? Is it for some charity?
imogen:
What? Are you talking to me?
henry:
Er … yes. I was … I was just …
imogen:
Listen, I don’t think we have a thing in common, do we? I’m sure you have
nothing to say that would be of the slightest interest to me. And there’s
nothing whatever that I want to talk to you about. So why don’t you just run
away and practise your small talk with somebody else?
(henry is
totally staggered by her rudeness. Before he can even begin to think of a
retort, imogen moves away from him.)
What do we make of this extract?
I shall fill you in on the contextual elements later. Try to relate our
impressions or interpretations of the extract to the linguistic elements. If
there are divergent impressions or interpretations, so much the better.
·
Note
down the style (‘feel’) of this particular passage.
·
Relate
the ‘style’ or ‘feel’ to elements in the language.
·
Discuss
the significance of this.
·
Now
try to distinguish between the characters’ speech styles. It might be possible to
note developments in the speech styles of individual characters.
Carter
and Stockwell (2008) include this Stylistics
Manifesto at the end of their book. At the end of the module, we might want
to evaluate the degree to which we have lived up to this!
1. Be theoretically aware. As
stylisticians we should be alive to the theoretical
foundations of the different interdisciplinary foundations domains on which we
draw, as well as of linguistic theory.
2. Be reception-oriented. The
literary ‘work’ only exists as a text in the mind of a reader; this fact should
be at the forefront of stylistic practice. Interpretation is not an ‘add-on’
feature but is a foundational principle with texture at its analytical centre.
3. Be sociolinguistic. We
should not neglect the broad sense of language study, taking account of the
social, cultural and ideological dimensions of reading.
4. Be eclectic. Stylisticians
should be eclectic as a matter of principle, in terms of analytical tools and
analytical projects.
5. Be holistic. We
should be aware that classification, categorisation and the focus on features
are analytical conveniences, and we should always re-contextualise the products
of our analyses.
6. Be populist. Stylisticians
should continue to challenge the literary canon, promote new configurations of
literariness, appreciate and demonstrate their value.
7. Be difficult. Being
populist does not exclude the courage to demystify obscurity and wilful
inarticulacy in theory, nor avoid challenging works of literary. The difficult
edges of literature are where we should stretch and test our frameworks rather
than simply illustrate and demonstrate their effectiveness.
8. Be precise. Stylistics should continue to uphold the
highest standards of analytical precision and transparency of practice. We must
be rational, rigorous, systematic, thorough and open.
9. Be progressive. We should aim for a better account of things.
Where an approach is shown to be faulty, it should be repaired or discarded. In
other words, we should aim for a stylistics of falsifiability.
10. Be evangelical. Stylistics
is the best approach to literary study. We should be unapologetic about this,
and should deploy all our rhetorical resources to continue to draw in
enthusiastic and committed researchers, teachers and students, and continue the
development of the field.
© 2020 Peter Tan