A great deal has been published in and about the major issues in literary stylistics, but there has been no attempt, as far as I know, to provide a clear-cut guide to such issues for the students who are just embarking on their readings about such a rapidly developing and controversial field of study. This book aims at providing such students of Applied Linguistics with a collection of the author's research papers on different aspects of Literary Stylistics. Most of these papers have been published in different journals, and since these journals might be inaccessible to the students, this book comes to make such papers available to the targeted readers.
The collection is designed to meet the need of Applied Linguistics and Literary Stylistics majors by giving them a sort of familiarity with various topics in Literary Stylistics. It may also be used as a supplementary material for post-graduate students in Literary Stylistics.
Moreover, I hope that this book will be particularly a useful guide to help researchers navigate and appreciate the diverse, ever expanding and exciting landscape of Literary Stylistics. It is true that it incorporates different theoretical orientations and stylistic domains, yet achieves an overall coherence through the sequencing of papers: this sequencing is intended to address three major issues on "style":
1. style as deviation from a given expectation
2. style as choice
3. style as recurrence.
These three issues represent the most debatable linguistic definitions of 'style'. Style as deviation from a norm is particularly relevant to signal out one specific text from others and it has its great benefits in authorship attribution. Style as choice determines the linguistic system or repertoire from which the writer has made his stylistic choices. Style as recurrence investigates the co-occurrences of certain linguistic features that could be structural, lexical, etc., a matter which provides the researcher with an idea about the way the writer's language manifests its probabilistic nature.
There are three parts in the book, the first part has three papers given over to the first issue. The second goes on with other three papers dedicated to the second issue. The third exposes two papers related to the third issue. It is the author's stance that gives priority, in terms of the number of papers dedicated for each issue, to the first two issues over the third. I have tried to maintain a balance between the three issu
Contents
PART ONE: STYLE AS DEVIATION
1 Levels of Linguistic Deviation in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
2 Foregrounding Through Parallelism and Deixis in Hemingway's Cat in the Rain
3 Linguistic Foregrounding Through Internal Deviation
PART TWO: STYLE AS CHOICE
4 Phrase Structure- Transformational Analysis and the Concept of Style as Choice
5 A Functional Analysis of the Nominal Group Structures, (Dylan Thomas' Poem There was a saviour As a Case Study)
6 A Functional Analysis of Transitivity in Joyce's Eveline
PART THREE: STYLE AS RECURRENCE
7 Style As a Product of Three Structural Principles
8 Sentence Length and complexity in Faulkner's The Bear
Objectives and Core Topics
The primary objective of this work is to provide a clear-cut guide for students and researchers of Applied Linguistics to the rapidly developing field of Literary Stylistics. The book investigates the definition of "style" through three major theoretical lenses, exploring how linguistic patterns function as markers of literary meaning in various canonical texts.
- The linguistic conceptualization of "style" as deviation, choice, and recurrence.
- The application of grammatical models (such as Phrase Structure-Transformational Grammar and Systemic Theory) to literary analysis.
- The exploration of linguistic foregrounding and its aesthetic functions in narrative and poetic discourse.
- Empirical analysis of syntactic complexity, nominal group structures, and transitivity in works by Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce, and others.
- The investigation of how specific linguistic choices construct reality and character within literary texts.
Excerpt from the Book
3. Morphological Deviation
This level of deviation is not open and feasible to those writers who are not interested in exploring the boundaries of language. Faulkner's experiments in morphology throughout As I Lay Dying invite us to recognize him as a serious writer overwhelmed with inescapable desire to reveal the features of substandard American English.
Faulkner's morphological liberties are so appealing particularly through the following points:
1. adding the (-ed) participle to irregularly inflected verbs:
"sawed", (18); "throwed" (33); "knowed" (passim); "growed" (186); . . . etc.
2. archaic past inflections are used: "holp" (29,72) instead of the regular inflectional form helped.
3. the suffix (-eth) is added comically to certain verbs (Marling,1988:25):
"I am the chosen of the lord, for who He loveth, so doeth He chastiseth." (85)
4. as for pronoun forms and inflections, the same contradiction is found with the accepted morphological norms. Thus, the inflection of mine and thine extended by analogy to the possessive pronouns for the third person singular, as in : "hisn" (passim); "hern" (73), and for the first person plural, as in : "ourn" (74). "Hisself" (passim) substitutes for the reflexive pronoun himself. Furthermore, the objective forms of personal pronouns substitute for the subject:
"me and him were born close together" (211)
It is true that Faulkner seems, at this level, more radical and confident of his attempts to exploit the language to the full, so that its resources no longer held any secrets for him.
Summary of Chapters
1 Levels of Linguistic Deviation in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying: This chapter analyzes how Faulkner employs various linguistic deviations across phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic levels to characterize the American Southern dialect and enhance the novel's aesthetic depth.
2 Foregrounding Through Parallelism and Deixis in Hemingway's Cat in the Rain: The author examines how Hemingway uses syntactic parallelism and deictic markers to emphasize the emotional distance and monotony in the lives of his characters.
3 Linguistic Foregrounding Through Internal Deviation: This section investigates how texts create their own norms and deviate from them, specifically analyzing the varying complexity of sentence structures in works by Joyce, Conrad, and Hemingway.
4 Phrase Structure- Transformational Analysis and the Concept of Style as Choice: This chapter implements Transformational Grammar to demonstrate how a poet’s choice of specific rules—such as Relative Clause Reduction—reflects the thematic focus of the work.
5 A Functional Analysis of the Nominal Group Structures, (Dylan Thomas' Poem There was a saviour As a Case Study): The chapter offers a systemic-functional analysis of nominal groups, showing how their increasing structural complexity mirrors the thematic development of the poem.
6 A Functional Analysis of Transitivity in Joyce's Eveline: This study utilizes Halliday’s transitivity model to uncover how the protagonist's paralyzed psychological state is encoded through specific process patterns in the narrative.
7 Style As a Product of Three Structural Principles: This analysis applies Francis Christensen's principles of sentence structure—addition and levels of generality—to categorize the stylistic texture of different writers.
8 Sentence Length and complexity in Faulkner's The Bear: The final chapter provides a quantitative stylistic analysis of Faulkner’s prose, correlating sentence length and complexity with the thematic intensity of his hunting narratives.
Keywords
Stylistics, Linguistic Deviation, Foregrounding, Transitivity, Phrase Structure, Functional Grammar, Syntactic Parallelism, Nominal Group, Christensen's Scheme, Narrative Discourse, Deixis, Systemic Theory, Authorial Style, Literary Analysis, Textual Patterning.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the primary focus of this work?
The work focuses on bridging the gap between linguistic theory and literary criticism, specifically by examining how linguistic features function as stylistic markers in prose and poetry.
What are the three core issues of "style" addressed in the book?
The author structures the analysis around three debatable linguistic definitions: style as deviation from a norm, style as the result of systematic choice, and style as the product of recurrence.
What research methodology is employed?
The book utilizes various formal linguistic methodologies, including Transformational-Generative Grammar, Systemic-Functional Linguistics, and Christensen’s rhetorical principles of sentence structure.
What is the purpose of analyzing linguistic deviations?
Analyzing deviation allows the researcher to reveal how authors intentionally violate standard language rules to produce aesthetic effects, characterize speakers, or highlight specific themes.
How is the "aesthetic function" determined in the texts?
The aesthetic function is explored by identifying how specific linguistic structures (like passive voice or repetitive syntactic patterns) correlate with the thematic meaning intended by the author.
What characterizes the linguistic analysis of the poem "There was a Saviour"?
The analysis focuses on the nominal group structure, arguing that the structural evolution from simple to complex groups within the poem parallels the evolving religious and emotional representations of the "Saviour."
How does the author define "Internal Deviation"?
Internal deviation refers to instances where a text sets up its own internal norm or pattern, and then deviates from that specific norm within the body of the same work.
What is the significance of the statistical analysis in the study of Faulkner's "The Bear"?
The statistical analysis of sentence length and dependency ratios provides objective evidence that correlates Faulkner’s complex syntactic structures with the "hunting narrative" climaxes of his story.
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- Khalid Shakir Hussein (Autor:in), 2014, Issues in Literary Stylisitcs, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/273823
