2.2 Stylistics
2.2.1 The Need for Stylistics
When talking about the English language, one should not be misled into thinking that the label should in some way refer to a readily identifiable object in reality, which he can isolate and examine in a classroom as a test-tube mixture, a piece of rock or a poem. The label of the English language is in fact a complex of many different ‘varieties’ of language in use in all kinds of situations in many parts of the world. Naturally, all these varieties have much more in common than differentiates them－they are all clearly varieties of one language, English. But at the same time, each variety is definably distinct from all the others.
As an educated speaker of English, a student of English is, in a sense, multilingual: for in the course of developing his command of language, he has encountered a large number of varieties, and to certain extent, has learned now to use them. A particular social situation makes him respond with an appropriate variety of language, the language of conversation, the language of newspaper reporting, the language of advertising and so on. But what is stylistics?
2.2.2 Definition
In the past, men have been intrigued with style and many students of human communication have offered their ideas about it. Some are concerned with clarity－or lucidity, as Aristotle called it. For this ancient Greek critic, it was important that the speaker or writer not only has ideas but that he says them ‘in the right way’, a way an audience can understand clearly. He also said that style should be neither above nor below the dignity of the subject but must be ‘appropriate’. Another student of language and human use of it, the Scottish writer George Campbell, also believed words (the author’s diction or word choice) were the foundation of style. He believed the best style comes from diction that the listener notices so little that he is barely ‘conscious that it is through this medium diction he sees into the speaker’s thoughts’ (The sense of style by Geoffrey N. Leech). But unfortunately, they do not clarify matters greatly, at least four commonly occurring senses of the term style need to be distinguished.
Style may refer to some or all of the language habits of one person-as when people talk of Shakespeare’s style (or styles), or the style of James Joyce. More often, it refers to a selection of language habits, shared by a group of people at one time, or over a period of time, as when we talk about the style of the Augustan poets, the style of Old English ‘heroic’ poetry, the style in which civil services forms are written, or styles of public-speaking.
Style is given a more restricted meaning when it is used in an evaluative sense, referring to the effectiveness of a mode of expression. This is implied by such popular definitions of style as ‘saying the right thing in the most effective way’ or as ‘good manners’. (Investing English style by David Crystal & Derek Davy)
Partly overlapping with the three senses just outlined is the wide spread use of the word style to refer solely to literary language. Style has long been associated primarily or exclusively with literature, as a characterized ‘good’, ‘effective’, or ‘beautiful’ writing.
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