Hisory of stylistics
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Stylistics can trace its roots to the formalist tradition that developed in
Russian literary criticism at the turn of the twentieth‐century, particularly in
the work of the Moscow Linguistic Circle. Its most famous member and the
most well‐known exponent of Russian Formalism was Roman Jakobson
(1896‐1982) whose work focused on defining the qualities of what he
termed ‘poetic language’. According to Jakobson, the poetic function of
language is realised in those communicative acts where the focus is on the
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Russian Formalism
Stylistics can trace its roots to the formalist tradition that developed in
Russian literary criticism at
the work of the Moscow
most well‐known exponent of Russian Formalism was Roman Jakobson
(1896‐1982) whose work focused on defining the qualities of what he
termed ‘poetic language’. According to Jakobson, the poetic function of
language is realised in those
message for its own sake (as opposed, say, to a communicative act focussed on conveying the
emotions of the speaker).
of stylistics, not least as a
the cross‐fertilisation of
Prague Structuralism
Following Jakobson’s emigration to Czechoslovakia in 1920, he began
collaborating with Czech literary scholars such as Jan Mukařovský (1891‐
1975), establishing the
famous as the birthplace of structuralism. Like Jakobson, Mukařovský was
interested in identifying the formal and functional distinctions between
literary and non‐literary
he termed the ‘standard language’ (Mukařovský 1964). According to
Mukarovský, the consequence of such deviation is the creation of a
defamiliarising effect for
In turn, Jakobson (1960)
texts, or, to give it its
(‘estrangement’) or ‘making
function of art is to make people look at the world from a new perspective. These concepts –
deviation, parallelism and
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European developments
Jakobson’s work with the
forced him into an extended
and Sweden he finally settled
his ideas to scholars in
Practical Criticism movements
ourselves. Almost in tandem with the work of the formalist and structuralist movements,
developments in the linguistic study of literature were being made by continental European
scholars. Chief among these
the Romance languages. In
to any modern stylistician;
and then using a linguistic
hypothesis. Spitzer rejected
may thus be seen as a forerunner to later work in stylistics which
embraced the scientific notion of objectivity in analysis. Alongside
Spitzer, other important scholars working in this tradition included
Auerbach, Bally and Guiraud,
the development of the French
than would be accepted by today’s stylisticians, there is undoubtedly a relation here to
contemporary stylistics.
New and Practical Criticism
Of these two groups of scholars – characterised by Jakobson on the one
hand and Spitzer on the other
most immediate impact on the
Formalism influenced the development of the two movements we have
already mentioned – New Criticism in America and
Practical Criticism in
were characterised by a focus
text, though New Criticism (
was concerned with the
while Practical Criticism (developed in the work of I. A. Richards) was
Robert Penn Warren
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interested in the psychological aspects of how readers comprehend texts. Both essentially
proceeded on the techniques of close reading and while this approach is viewed by today’s
stylisticians as too
Practical Criticism with readers’ processing of texts makes it a direct precursor of contemporary
cognitive stylistics.
While the formalist and
be clear that its value is in
insights from formalism have
parallelism and foregrounding still acting as the linchpins of contemporary approaches to the
discipline. Willie van Peer
while Geoffrey Leech has demonstrated convincingly that foregrounding in texts is intrinsic to
literary interpretation. The connection between analysis and interpretation is strengthened by
Leech’s concepts of
towards refuting accusations
robustly defended by stylisticians like Mick Short. And in recent work in cognitive stylistics,
foregrounding has been
The impact of Chomskyan
Since stylistics draws so
without some reference to the
with literary texts and their
on stylistics. The work of
proceeds on the assumption
some underlying structure. To these we can add Levin’s work on linguistic structures in poetry.
Indeed, Graham Hough wrote in
confined to semantics and
time he was writing.
Explorations in non‐literary
While stylistics had so far
been the subject of criticism for its eclecticism, its lack of a methodological and theoretical
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foundation, and its alleged base in literary criticism. A major focus on poetry also caused some
suspicion in linguistic
through the development of a
style in non‐literary
particularly important here. Crystal and Davy’s concern was how particular
social contexts restrict the
Enkvist proposed that this
stylistic choices could
informal lexis and grammar
effect a context of
stall at this point, and it
perhaps the lack of
Crystal and Davy’s and
Systemic‐functional
The basis of stylistics in
on the former, and so it was
were circumvented by its becoming particularly practical and by the
movement of stylistics into the areas of language teaching and
pedagogical stylistics. Furthermore, Halliday’s work on systemic
functional grammar related
language system as a whole
prose fiction. For example,
and Language, 1966, is a seminal work in early stylistics), used
Hallidayan‐style transitivity
text. The influence of Halliday’s work can also be seen in Leech and
Short’s now famous Style in
The impact of pragmatics and
During the late seventies and
pragmatics, where the focus
exemplar of how this work
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enabled for the first time
using pragmatic and
article on discourse analysis
used to uncover aspects of
also facilitated a renewed
Language) and the ideology‐
a crossover here, of course,
that is unremittingly
From cognition to corpora
Into the 1990s there was a
and processing texts, and
known as cognitive stylistics
considered text comprehension
stylistics can be seen as directly related to earlier investigations into the ways in which readers
process texts. Among such
response work of, for example,
recent years have also had a
construction and analysis of
enabled a return to some of the original concerns of stylistics – namely, the extent to which
foregrounding is quantifiable
claimed. These were questions
linguistics. Nowadays, the
there is almost no excuse not
Stylistics, then, has come a
forward‐looking discipline.
develop.
pp. 3‐14. Basingstoke: