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History of Stylistics

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History of Stylistics Dr Bimbola O. Idowu-Faith English Department Bowen University History of stylistics Even though stylistics began flourishing in Britain and the United States in the 1960s, stylistics can be traced back to classical rhetoric and poetics. Specifically, stylistics can be said to be deeply rooted in ELOCUTIO, the third of the five canons of rhetoric, which has to do with stylisation – the effective selection of appropriate style in particular contexts. At the stage of ELOCUTIO, consideration is given to KAIROS (locative time) rather than KRONOS (linear time), such that the style of the text fits the audience, the occasion, and the subject matter. History of stylistics A major kairotic consideration relates to whether the style of the text is low (plain/attic), middle or high (florid/Asiatic). The high style particularly requires style figures either as schemes or tropes. Schemes involve deviation in terms of syntax and tropes involves deviation in terms of semantics. Thus, the florid style provided the foundation upon which the concept of foregrounding, a significant notion in modern stylistics, is built. Apart from rhetoric, Fowler (1981) (cited in Stockwell, 2006, p. 743) submits that there were three direct influences which produced stylistics: Anglo-American literary criticism; the emerging field of linguistics; and European, especially French, structuralism. History of stylistics Formalism, especially Russian formalism, linked to the Moscow Linguistics Circle, (1915) and the Petrograd Society for the Study of Poetic Language (Opayaz), (1916) also greatly influenced the development of stylistics. Members of this movement included Viktor Shklovsky who is credited for such terms as deautomatisation, estrangement, fabula and plot; Vladimir Propp whose notable terms included function and morphology of folktales; and Roman Jakobson whose notable terms included equivalence, metaphor, poetic function, speech event. History of stylistics The major aim of the formalists was to study literature in much more scientific way. That is, they wished to align literary studies more with linguistics. This goal led to the desire to discover the formal linguistic features which differentiate poetic language from non- poetic language. This goal birthed the argument on the existence or otherwise of a literary language - the literariness argument. Thus, as Stockwell (2006, p. 734) will submit, it was Formalism and practical criticism that influenced stylistics’ focus of interest on literature and the literary whilst it was linguistics that influenced the rigour of descriptive analysis and the scientific concern for transparency in that description. History of stylistics Equally significant to the development of stylistics is the Prague School, more appropriately called the Prague Linguistic Circle. Like Russian Formalism, the Prague School was one of the most influential linguistic and literary movements of the early twentieth century. Much of the influence of the Prague School is still observable in the different models of Systemic Functional Grammar. Roman Jakobson was the major link between Formalism and the Prague School because he moved from Moscow to Prague and helped found the Circle in 1926. Thus, the Circle started as a formalist movement, but gradually turned to a functional one which took context as a significant element in a text’s meaning making process. History of stylistics Some of the great thinkers within the Circle are Vilem Mathesius, Jan Mukařovský, and N.S. Trubetskoy. Mukařovský’s concept of ACTUALISATION, as well as the formalist Shklovsky’s earlier term - ‘making strange’(defamiliarisation), served as the foundation upon which the concept of FOREGROUNDING is built. Prague school was also influenced by STRUCTURALISM of Ferdinand de Saussure. Thus, the Circle developed Saussure’s ideas of LANGUE and PAROLE along functionalist lines. History of stylistics Because of its functionalist perspective, the Prague School held that the functions language performs shape language system. Wales (2011, p. 336) equally points out that functionalism was also the basis of their study of LITERARY LANGUAGE and its AESTHETIC qualities, with prime importance given to the POETIC FUNCTION. History of stylistics Furthermore, Wales (2011, p. 336-7) notes that the Prague School built on the ideas of the Formalists by developing notions of FOREGROUNDING and (DE- AUTOMATIZATION) which refer to the characteristic function of poetic language as highlighting and ESTRANGING language and meaning consciously and creatively by means of DEVIATION or patterns of PARALLELISM against the BACKGROUND of non- literary language. .
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