STYLE = the characteristic manner of expression; how particular writer says things

   -         choice of words

   -         figures of speech

   -         rhetorical and other devices

   -         the shape of the sentences

   -         the shape of the paragraphs

   Stylistics = analytical science which covers all the expressive aspects of language:
   phonology, prosody, morphology, syntax and lexicology; akin to linguistics and semantics

   

   Types of style:

   a)      according to the period (Metaphysical, Augustan, Georgian etc.)

   b)      according to individual authors (Chaucerian, Miltonic, Jamesian etc.)

   c)       according to level (grand, middle, low and plain)

   d)      according to language (scientific, expository, poetic, emotive, referential,
   journalistic etc.)

   

   LANGUAGE AND PLACE

   Test creates a sense of place in 2 main ways:

   - through description of places (provides geographical background and sometimes a symbolic
   dimension -- see Wuthering Heights)

   - through the particular ways in which characters (and sometimes narrator) speak           

   

   Language variations and varieties:

   - accents

   - dialects

   - registers- variety switching, repertoire available to individual speakers according to the
   situation of use

   

   Attitudes to language varieties -- uneven, traditionally a question of hierarchy, related to
   historical, social and political changes in society

   

   Language variety in lit. texts:

   Before 16th century -- English, Latin and French

   Change in the Elizabethan period

   18th c - eminent literary qualities of English

   Dialect representation -- within the constraints of the genre style, illusion of speech to give
   an aura of authenticity or to establish the social diversification of the characters

   Modernism - polyphony of voices but still subordinated to an authoritative standard voice of
   the narrator

   Postmodernism -- multiplicity, equality, post-colonialism -- different experiences of place and
   connections between voice, region and sense of identity

   

   LANGUAGE AND TIME

   All languages change over the course of time

   A text may be a force for a language change or may retard it

   Theories of language change:

   -         as an anonymous process

   -         as a politically motivated process

   LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY

   Language - crucial to the creation and maintenance of both social relationship and social
   identities. The ways we use language -- important signals about the social order and our own
   place within it

   LANGUAGE AND CONTEXT

   Contexts which affect register

    1. the mode or medium (spoken, written)
    2. the social relationships or participants in the situation, which determine the tone
    3. the purpose

   LANGUAGE AND GENDER

   Language plays an important role in shaping the social scene and constructing social
   indetities

   Male as the norm -- see generic use of "man" or "he"

   Female as downgraded or derogated -- see asymmetrical distribution of "master" -- "mistress",
   "Mr" -- "Mrs", "Miss"

   Change in the 70s

   V. Woolf: a woman's sentence

   

   

   Some types of language change:

   Archaism

   Feminist changes to language

   Politically correct speech

   

   Some other terms influencing the style:

   

   Euphemism                              play on words

   Pleonasm                                 omission or "slurring" of a syllable

   Tautology                                 inserted word or phrase

   Periphrasis                               a poem in which the initial letters in each line
   make up a word or

                                                   Words when read downwards

   Pun                                          a roundabout way of speaking or writing

   Inversion                                  a sequence of unpleasant sounds

   Parenthesis                               leaving out a word to achieve more compact
   expression

   Elision                                      redundant use of words

   Ellipsis                         a combination of incongruous or apparently contradictory
   words

                                                   and meanings

   Acrostic                                   the formation and use of words to imitate sounds

   Oxymoron                               rhetorical device, repetition of words or groups of
   words in

                                                   successive clauses       

   Onomatopoeia                          a sequence of pleasing sounds

   Anaphora                                 substitution of a pleasant word for a harsh or blunt
   one or a

                                                   mild word to describe sth unpleasant

   Euphony                                  redundant repetition of words or ideas

   Cacophony                              the reversal of the normal word order of a sentence