LITERARY STYLISTICS and LINGUOSTYLISTICS Deals with the language

LITERARY STYLISTICS and LINGUOSTYLISTICS • • • Deals with the language tissue of a text; Centers on connotative meanings that can be derived from language means themselves; Focuses on identifying expressive means and stylistic devices and their interpretation. LITERARY STYLISTICS • • Makes up a part of theory of literature and poetics; Centers on peculiarities of literary genre, literary trend, means of artistic expressiveness, image system; Takes into account the biography of the author, her/his aesthetic values and world perception; her/his individual use of language means and artistic mastery; Resorts to the knowledge of the history of literature in the process of interpretation.

TEXT LEVELS MESSAGE IDEAS, THEMES AESTHETIC VALUES PHILOSOPHY COMPOSITION (EXPOSITION, DEVELOPMENT OF ACTION, DENOUEMENT); AUTHOR’S AND CHARACTER’S PLANE; “POINT OF VIEW” PROBLEM; FICTIONAL TIME AND SPACE; VERTICAL CONTEXT (KNOWLEDGE OF THE HISTORICAL EPOCH, REALIA, ALLUSIONS AND QUOTATIONS) SYNTACTICAL LEVEL LEXICAL LEVEL GRAPHIC AND PHONETIC LEVEL

DECODING STYLISTICS Founder – Michael Riffaterre Using the notions and terminology of theory of information Riffaterre defines stylistics as a science which “studies those features of a linguistic utterance that are intended to impose the encoder’s mode of thinking on the decoder”

(Sender) Mode of thinking + feelings [I. Arnold] Text (Message) Code – a system of signs and rules of their interpretation used to convey a message Society (adressee) Reality and mental reality (source of information) Encoder Literature (channel) “Author-Text-Reader” as a system of conveying information Decoder (receiver) (Reader)

Features and aims of decoding stylistics (I. Arnold) • The Author selects a fragment of reality and encodes her/his ideas/message using language means, other codes (symbolic codes, codes of etiquette, etc) and different ways of compressing information; • The codes of Sender and Receiver do not coincide. Writer and Reader can’t be identical intellectually, culturally and emotionally. As a result, literary text always allows for different interpretations and is able to generate new meanings; • DS studies literary codes and “patterns” of decoding for different language levels; • DS means “Stylistics from the point of view of readers”. Its primary focus is not the Author, but literary text itself as a source of aesthetic impressions for the Reader; • DS teaches one the art of being a profound reader, paying attention to those aspects of the text which are usually overlooked by “nonprofessional” readers

Types of information perceived by the Reader (I. Arnold) • • • Cognitive Emotive Expressive Evaluative Aesthetic

Stylistic function is the expressive potential of the interaction of language means in a text, which conveys emotive, expressive, evaluative and aesthetic information (I. Arnold) E. g. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”: [i: ] in free, bee, peace, deep – emotive and evaluative connotations; “David Copperfield” : “the dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all” – evaluative epithet. • • Features of SF: accumulation; irradiation

Convergence of expressive means and stylistic devices M. Riffaterre: “A heaping-up of stylistic features working together” EMs and SDs work together to create an effect, a certain image or mood. E. g. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience. (H. Melville “Moby Dick”) Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily. (W. Shakespeare “Henry IV”)

Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices There exists a variety of terms used to denote those means by which a writer achieves the effect she/he needs: E. g. stylistic means, stylistic features, stylistic devices, expressive means. I. Galperin suggests differentiating between expressive means (EMs) and stylistic devices (SDs)

Expressive Means EMs are “those phonetic means, morphological forms, means of word-building, and lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms, all of which function in the language for emotional or logical intensification of the utterance” (I. Galperin)

Expressive Means • Graphic and phonetic E. g. You are a rotter, Stanton (J. Priestley “Dangerous Corner”) “Appeeee Noooooyeeeeeerrr!” (Myrer) • Morphological (modals, auxiliaries, plural forms, etc) E. g. And I shall have some peace there… (W. B. Yeats) The Snows of Cilimangaro (E. Hemingway) I says, “Mrs. Peevy, ma’am, would you mind choking off that kid of yours so that honest people can get their rest” (O’Henry) • Lexical (interjections; choice of vocabulary, specific groups of literary or non-standard English, etc) E. g. Hail to thee, blithe spirit! (P. B. Shelly) • Syntactical (inversion, etc) E. g. Very true those words are, sir (A. Christie) Isn’t she cute!

Stylistic Devices SD is “a conscious and intentional literary use of some of the facts of the language in which the most essential features of the language forms are raised to a generalized level and thereby present a generative model” (I. Galperin) E. g. Metaphor = A is B Life is a dream/nightmare. Life is a train that stops only once and forever. Life is an elaborate novel or a primitive short story depending on who writes it. Life is…

Peculiarities of Stylistic Devices (I. Galperin) • SDs form a special group of language means which are more abstract than expressive means; • SDs are less predictable than EMs and carry a greater amount of information. They must be regarded as a special code which we should decipher; • SDs are part of the language system [? controversial].