The concept of Style Overview - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The concept of Style

Overview

1. Conceptualizing Style

Dualism

Monism

Pluralism

2. Types of Style

Authorial Style

Text Style

Genre Style

Epoch Style

Conceptualizing Style

Conventionally, style

refers to

the

way in which language is used in a

given context

, by a given person, for a given purpose

(Leech and Short, 2007: 9).

Style is the sum of linguistic features that are characteristic of a person, text or genre (

Nørgaard

, 2010: 156).

Short (2013: 81) associates style with the concept of language varieties across dialects, media/modes, tenors and domains.

Is style related to the choice of form or function?

Dualism

Style can

be envisaged as the dress of thought.

Such Dualist view is premised on the assumption that the

aesthetics of

form, rather than the content, tends

to attract the

reader’s attention (Leech and Short, 2007: 14).

Style can also be thought of as a manner of expressions.

Such

a dualist view holds that there can be different ways of conveying the same content

.

Consider the cases of passivation and colloquialism.

Dualism

Dualism is based on

the commonsensical meaning of the word style.

Leech and Short (2007: 20) point out that ”the

dualist’s notion of

paraphrasing rests

on the assumption that there

is some

basic sense that can be preserved in different

renderings”.

Two problems arise with this view:

This view is untenable and easily challenged when paraphrasing literary & religious texts and when translating texts across languages, modes & domains.

It assumes the existence of a type of style that

can be neutral aesthetically, morally and

ideologically (the absence

of

style).

Monism

Monism rejects

the form-content dichotomy.

Consider this

line

by Yeats

:

Tread

softly because you tread on my

dreams

.

According monism, the choices

that are clearly dictated

by subject

matter are part of

style.

For monists, from and content are inseparable as they both contribute to style.

Monism

Monism underscores the difficulty of rendering texts across languages and modes.

Such a view is

counterintuitive, because the general meaning of the a text can be transferred across languages, modes & domains.

What type of meaning that can be transferred across languages and modes?

Pluralism

Pluralists analyze style in terms of functions.

Language

performs a

number of

different functions, and

style is the

result

of choices

made on different functional

levels.

Jakobson

‘s

Functions of

Language (

Jakobson

‘, 1961)

Halliday’s

Functions of Language (

Halliday

, 1973)

Pluralism

Pluralists

rule out the from-content dichotomy as too simplistic.

Stylistic significance is not only associated with the from of the linguistic choice but

also to its content, i.e. its referential function (

a’la

Jakobson

) or ideational function (

a’la

Halliday

).

Pluralism can then be regarded as a more sophisticated version of monism, but unlike monism,

it does not view a

text as an undifferentiated

whole hard to scrutinize linguistically.

Thus, Leech

and Short (2007) argues that pluralism is more eliminating than both monism and dualism

.

Style

‘Style’

is a

motivated linguistic choice

made out

of a linguistic repertoire (Leech and Short, 2007; Simpson, 2004: 22).

Stylistic choices

have a profound impact on the way texts are structured and

interpreted

(Simpson

, 2004: 22).

To what or whom do we attribute

these motivated linguistic choices?

Types of Style

According to

Leech and Short (2007) and

Jeffries and

McIntyre (2010),

style can be conceptualized in terms of:

Authorial Style: the linguistic choices made by th

e author, which eventually give rise to the singularity

of individual

style

.

Text Style:

the distinctive linguistic patterns that are characteristic

of

a text.

Genre

Style: the common linguistic features found in texts belonging to a given genre.

Epoch

Style: the common linguistic features associated with a particular period of time.

Types of Style

Two important questions:

From a methodological perspective, which conceptualization of style is more adequate and

operationalizable

? And why?

From

an

aesthetic

perspective

, which conceptualization of style is more adequate and

operationalizable

? And Why?

Types of Style

The distinctiveness of personal style can be overemphasized (Leech and Short, 2007: 10). It is conditioned by personal preferences & habits, context, genre, etc.

The commonality of the style associated with particular genre or epoch can only be measured by analyzing related texts

conventionally attributed to a particular genres or epoch.

The

concept text is the natural starting place for the study of

style. It can be done systematically with focus on why certain

structure are chosen over others (Leech and Short, 2007: 10

).

References

Holliday, M.A.K. (1973).

Explorations in the Functions of Language .

London: Edward Arnold.

Jeffries, L. and McIntyre, D. (2010) 

Stylistics

. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leech G. and Short, M. (2007)

Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose

. (2nd Edition. London: Longman.

Nørgaard

, N.;

Busse

, B. &

Montoro

, R. (2010).

Key Terms in Stylistics

. London & New York: Continuum.

Short, M. (2013).

Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose

. (2

nd Edition). London : Routledge. Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A resource book for students. London: Routledge.jakobson, r. (1961) ‘Closing statement: linguistics and poetics’. Style in Language, 350 (377) 570-579.