Stylistics as a branch of linguistics. The problem of stylistic research

Units of language on different levels are studied by traditional branches of linguistics as phonetics (that deals with speech sounds and intonation), lexicology (treats the words, their meaning and vocabulary structure), grammar (analysis forms of words), syntax (analysis the function of words in a sentence).
These areas of study are more or less clear-cut. Some scholars claim that stylistic is a comparatively new branch of linguistics, The term stylistics really came into existence not too long ago.