lecture 7 stylistics

• Chapter Stylistics

• Wang Dianjian

• 1.Introduction

• Definitions

• Stylistics is the branch of linguistics that studies language style. It explains the relationship between the text and its context. (Hu Zhuanglin, 2002 )

• Literary stylistics studies the language of literature . It focuses on the study of linguistic features related to literary style. (Hu Zhuanglin, 2001)

• definitions

• Stylistics: the study of that variation in language (style) which is dependent on the situation in which the language is used and also on the effect the writer or speaker wishes to create on the reader or hearer. Although stylistics sometimes includes investigation of spoken language, it usually refers to the study of written language , including literary texts. Stylistics is concerned with the choices that are available to a writer and the reasons why particular forms and expressions are used rather than others.

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TRADITIONAL DEFINITIONS OF RHETORIC

• (1)Rhetoric as the Art of Oratory

• In Aristotle and elsewhere rhetoric was in fact primarily concerned with oral discourse, the earliest mode of verbal expression, of course still very much alive.

• 雄辩术的出现 作为使用语言来最大限度地影响听众的一种手段，雄辩术在荷马史诗中已显示出震撼人心的力量。从修辞学的萌芽时期已经可以看出，“修辞总是与社会处于一种共生的关系，根据一个社会与它的要求在扩大或缩小其范围。”

• (2)Rhetoric as the Art of Writing

• Rhetoric began to be associated with writing from the Middle Ages when rhetoric did produce sets of rules for the legal letters through which the far flung Church and secular governments were administered.

• (3)Rhetoric as the Art of Style

• With the decline of democracy in Rome, rhetoric entered an era when it essentially was divorced from civic affairs. A series of emperors were in power, and anyone who spoke publicly in opposition to them was likely to be punished. Rhetoric, then ,was relegate to a back seat and became an art concerned with style and delivery rather than with content.

• Style

• 1. variation in a person’s speech or writing . Style usually varies from casual to formal according to the type of situation , the person or person addressed, the location, the topic discussed. A particular style, e.g. a formal style or a colloquial style, is sometimes referred to as a stylistic variety. (register)

• 2.style can also refer to a particular person’s use of speech or writing at all times or to a way of speaking or writing at a particular period of time, e.g. Dickens’ style, an 18th-century style of writing.

• Stylistic variation

• 1. pronunciation: sitting, making

• 2. words and sentence structures

• We were somewhat dismayed by his lack of response to our invitation.

• We were rather fed up that she didn’t answer when we invited her.

• The stylistic variation of an individual or group can be measured by analyzing recorded speech and making comparison.

• 2.Three areas of stylistic studies

• Chinese stylistics

• Western stylistics

• Chinese studies of Western stylistics

• Chinese stylistics:

In the southern dynasty period: Liu Xie, the carving of the Literary Mind.

• Tang Poetry ,the Song Prose Poems, the Yuan Verse Poems and the Ming and Qing Novels.

• The beginning of modern Chinese stylistics: C hen Wangdao’s Principles of rhetoric (1932).

• The foundation of the Chinese Association of Rhetoric in 1980.

• The publication of the stylistics series ,edited by Tong Qingbing in the mid 1990s.

• Western stylistics:

• The Greek’s and the Roman’s interest in style was combined with their study of rhetoric.

• Longinus(213-273 A. D), On the Sublime, paid more attention to the aesthetic function of style.

• Charles Bally, in 1909,Traité de stylistique francaise was the beginning of western modern stylistics.

• In the 1960s and 70s,stylistics was recognized as an independent discipline which focused its study on the form and function of style.

• In the 1980s discourse stylistics was in vogue with its emphasis on the mutual interaction between the two sides of the conversation participants.

• The 1990s witnessed the develop of social-historical/social-cultural stylistics whose purpose was to reveal the implied relationship of ideology and power.

• New development of western stylistics

• Different schools of stylistics compete for the development and new schools emerge every now and then,

• Social stylistics, politicized stylistics, functional stylistics, forensic stylistics, feminist stylistics, pragmatic stylistics, contextualized stylistics, etc

• Chinese studies of Western stylistics

• Wang Zuoliang(1963),Studies of English Style was the first Chinese study of Western stylistics.

• Wang Zuoliang(1980), Essays in English Style marked the beginning of Chinese study of Western stylistics.

• In 1985, the National Ministry of Education designed the teaching syllabus for English Stylistics.

• The late 1990s witnessed new development of stylistics studies

• In 1999,the first national conference on stylistics was held in Nanjing; the second in Jinan in 2000; the third in Chongqing in 2002.

• Chinese studies of Western stylistics

• Two interesting points of Chinese stylistics studies:

• 1.Chinese stylistics studies are carried out in the department of Chinese but Chinese studies of Western stylistics are carried out in the department of foreign languages.

• 2.studies of stylistics are divided into three branches: Literary stylistics (studies of the style of literary works, language and literature); general stylistics (studies of the style of all the varieties of language use other than that of literature); theoretical stylistics (the concept of style and the theoretical models of stylistic analysis).

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