He lunges for the stairs, swings down-off, Into the sun for his Easter eggs, On very nearly steady legs
(Edwin Morgan, Good Friday)
In this poem the poet describes a scene of going down the stairs into the sun for the Easter eggs. The lines of the poetry imitate the shape of the stairs. The format is indicative of the meaning.
Stylistics analysis: Goals &procedures
Goals: 1. To show why and how the text means what it
does. 2. To show why the text is valued as it is. Procedures: Description Interpretation Evaluation
Language & Literature
Stylistics
The formation of the word stylistics, i.e. style + istics, indicates that it is an interdisciplinary study. (style for literary criticism, and istics for linguistics) Thus stylistics can be defined as the study of style, a branch of linguistics which applies the theories and methodologies of modern linguistics to the study of style.
Style as deviation
The distinctiveness of a literary text resides in its departure from the characteristics of what is communicatively normal.
anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn’t he danced his did
e.g. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move,
but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in.
Foregrounding can be classified into two types: qualitative (deviation from the language code itself) and quantitative (deviance from some expected frequency). In the terms of Halliday, the first type is called incongruity (失协), and the second type deflection (失衡).
e.g.
Unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself.
Syntactic deviation
1. Unusual clause theme Literary writers may place any of the rest of the clause elements in the thematic position in order to achieve certain literary effect. e.g.
Surface level deviation
Phonological deviation
1. Omission 1) Aphesis---the omission of the initial part of a word. e.g.
Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep skeviation from the norm. The distinctiveness of a literary text resides in its departure from the characteristics of what is communicatively normal.
Levels of Stylistic Analysis
According to the above-mentioned criteria, stylistic analysis can be classified into surface-structure deviation and deepstructure deviation; as well as phonological over-regularity and syntactic over-regularity.
Lexical deviation in literature refers almost exclusively to neologisms or the coinage of new words. In coining new words, it may be said that the literary writer is not so much breaking rules of word-formation as extending the rules.
(Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose)
Special pronunciation For convenience of rhyming, the poet may give
special pronunciation to certain words. e.g.
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind, If winter comes, can spring be far behind? (P. B. Shelly. Ode to the West Wind) In this poem, the noun wind /wind/ is pronounced like the verb ‘wind’ /waind/ to rhyme with behind.
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed.
(P. B. Shelley, Ode to the West Wind)
2) Syncope---the omission of a medial part of a word.
e.g. A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.
Stylistics has a broad sense and a narrow sense. In its broad sense, it studies the use of language in all kinds of contexts and how language use caries in accordance with varying circumstances.
In its narrow sense, stylistics only focuses on texts of artistic value, i.e. literary texts. Stylistics in this narrow sense is called literary stylistics, the goal of which is to explain the relation between language and artistic function.
— e.e. cummings
Style as choice
Style results from a tendency of a speaker or writer to consistently choose certain structures over others available in the language; language is the sum total of the structures available to the speaker or writer, while style concerns the characteristic choices in a given context.
Graphological deviation
1. Shape of text The shape of a piece of literary work, especially a poem, can be designed in an unconventional way so that it may be suggestive of a certain literary theme.
(Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper)