Transcript LITERARY STYLISTICS and LINGUOSTYLISTICS

LITERARY STYLISTICS and
LINGUOSTYLISTICS
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 the 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 the
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)
Encoder
Literature (channel)
(source of information)
Reality and mental reality
“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
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].