1.

STYLE AND STYLISTICS: A BREEDING GROUND FOR AMBIGUITY

Style

Trying to Define Style

Very frequently used in many areas of research, both linguistic and literary, style
proves to be too rich a concept to be easily and clearly defined. Therefore, attempts at
providing a viable description of it rely on different perspectives on the applicability of
the term.
A case in point is Katie Wales’s rich, relevant and complex definition of style
according to the larger domains where it is used. She starts from the simplest view on the
concept, namely that of one’s way of expressing oneself or of performing actions: “At its
simplest, style refers to the manner of expression in writing or speaking, just as there is a
manner of doing things […]. We might talk of someone writing in an ‘ornate style’, or
speaking in a ‘comic style’. For some people, style has evaluative connotations: style can
be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ”1. Such an approach seems to be also connected with the ideas of
individuality of style, as well as the relativity or subjectivity of the concept when applying
it in literary text analysis.
Consequently, one must admit the existence of a variety of styles matching the
different possible situations of communication, thus being regarded as language variation:
“…there are different styles in different situations […]; also that the same activity can
produce stylistic variation […]. So style can be seen as variation in language use, whether
literary or non-literary. […] Style may vary not only from situation to situation but
according to medium and degree of formality: what is sometimes termed style-shifting” 2.
The importance of communication circumstances and purpose of use present the analyst
with a greater array of language variations than initially expected.
Whichever of these two points of view we may agree to, it is obvious that style
always implies a group or category of distinctive features that share specific traits and
which are characteristic of a certain person / writer: “In each case, style is seen as
1
Katie Wales, A Dictionary of Stylistics, Longman, London and New York, 1991, second impression, p 435
2
Katie Wales, idem, p. 435-436
distinctive: in essence, the set or sum of linguistic features that seem to be characteristic:
whether of register, genre or period etc. Style is very commonly defined in this way,
especially at the level of the text […]. When applied to the domain of an author’s entire
oeuvre, style is the set of features peculiar to, or characteristic of an author: his or her
‘language habits’ or idiolect”3. This is to say that each author may be regarded as creating
a linguistic map of his / her stylistic imprints, a map that can be used when trying to
decode the stylistic identity of a specific text or writer.
However, any member of a linguistic community has access to the resources of a
language; it is the peculiar combining of elements and the original structuring and
organizing of them that allow one to distinguish among different speakers / authors:
“Clearly each author draws upon the general stock of the language in any given period;
what makes style distinctive is the choice of items, and their distribution and patterning. A
definition of style in terms of choice is very popular, the selection of features partly
determined by the demands of genre, form, theme etc.” 4. Particularization of language use
may be indeed found at all levels of analysis, and it is this individual dimension of an
author’s style that creates authentic stylistic effects.
Nonetheless, there is another definition of style that Wales envisages, i.e. style
regarded as deviation; assuming that there is a generally agreed upon norm, style may
refer to the bending of this norm, or, to put it simply, it may just mean being different
from standard ideas:
“Another differential approach to style is to compare one
set of features with another in terms of deviation from a
norm […]. It would be wrong to imply that style itself is
deviant in the sense of ‘abnormal’, even though there are
marked poetic idiolect like those of Hopkins, Dylan
Thomas or e.e. cummings. Rather, we match any text or
piece of language against the linguistic norm of its genre,
or its period, and the common core of language as a whole.

3
Katie Wales, idem, p. 436
4
Katie Wales, idem, p. 436
 Different texts will reveal different patterns of dominant or
foregrounded features”5.
On the other hand, Oswald Ducrot and Jean-Marie Schaeffer adopt a simpler and
somewhat narrower view on style, considering that it may represent the blending of the
choice that must be operated in any discourse in terms of the available elements within
language and of the variations that it introduces against the background of these available
elements6.
Moreover, it is the same two authors who take the issue further and show that the
available elements within language may find their realization as linguistic sub-codes,
such as language registers. However, we must bear in mind that all the texts of a certain
author do not necessarily display the same style, as well as texts of different authors do
not have to display different styles; this is the reason why we cannot talk about writings
that do display style and others that do not.
Taking the definition attempts at a deeper level, it seems that I. R. Galperin’s
analysis of the concept may be regarded upon as the richest, also taking into
consideration the etymology of the word itself. Originally “derived from the Latin word
‘stilus’ which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the
Romans for writing on wax tablets”7, style has reached such a frequent use nowadays,
relating to so many fields of interest that Galperin calls it “a breeding ground for
ambiguity”8.
Furthermore, he looks upon the concept as having multiple interrelated meanings: a
tool in the teaching of the manner in which a composition must be written; revealing the
correspondence between thought and expression; denoting the individual use of language,
not to mention the times it refers to general or abstract notions or concepts, thus
enhancing its ambiguity and vagueness. Hence, the extraordinary difficulty when trying
to define it as clearly as possible.

5
Katie Wales, idem, p. 437
6
Oswald Ducrot, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Noul dicţionar enciclopedic al ştiinţelor limbajului, Editura Babel,
Bucureşti, 1996, p. 421
7
I. R. Galperin, Stylistics, Moscow, 1977, second edition, p. 11
8
I.R. Galperin, idem, p. 11
 Galperin9 records a brief history of the concept and the definitions it has acquired
throughout years and years of research, whether wearing the coat of a proper definition,
or being disguised under the mask of maxims or epigrams:
 ‘Style is the man himself’ (Buffon),
 ‘Style is depth’ (Darbyshire),
 ‘Style is deviations’ (Enkvist),
 ‘Style is choice’ […]
 ‘Style is the quality of language which communicates precisely emotions and
thoughts, or a system of emotions and thoughts, peculiar to the author’ (J.
Middleton Murry),
 ‘…a true idiosyncrasy is the result of an author’s success in compelling language
to conform to his mode of experience’ (J. Middleton Murry),
 ‘Style is a contextually restricted linguistic variation’ (Enkvist),
 ‘Style is a selection of non-distinctive features of language’ (L. Bloomfield),
 ‘Style is simply synonymous with form or expression and hence a superfluous
term’ (Benedetto Croce),
 ‘Style is essentially a citational process, a body of formulae, a memory (almost in
the cybernetic sense of the word), a cultural and not an expressive inheritance’
(Roland Barthes).
Thus, it is quite easy to notice that all these attempted definitions deal with various
issues within the field of stylistics; yet, the same line is preserved, i.e. different
perspectives on style and stylistics, which leads to slightly different interests in
subdisciplines of stylistics itself or other related domains of research.
Nevertheless, there are more perspectives to be taken into account, and one of them
relies on studying the effects of the message, namely its impact on the reader. Among the
linguists who supported this idea, Michael Riffaterre draws his point of view from the
theory of information and that of communication; considering the fact that language is
indeed the most important means of communication, it is not difficult to understand his
interest in stylistics as the result of the act of communication. Therefore, in his opinion,
“stylistics will be a linguistics of the effects of the message, of the output of the act of
9
cf. I. R. Galperin, idem, p.11
communication, of its attention-compelling function”10. Stylistics, thus, emerges as what
is created in-between the encoding of a message and its decoding when it reaches its
destination.
As this perspective left room for interpretation, Archibald. A. Hill enlarges the field
of research and interest when tackling the issues of style and stylistics, namely by
considering language to be a system which crosses the boundaries of individual use: “A
current definition of style and stylistics is that structures, sequences and patterns which
extend, or may extend, beyond the boundaries of individual sentences define style, and
the study of them is stylistics”11. We may indeed look upon style as transcending
individual choices and unfolding upon various levels that share common features, in what
may be an attempt at classifying complex interdependency relationships within
stylistically marked areas of investigation.
However, a more frequent definition of style takes us back to operating choice at an
individual level. Seymour Chatman states that “style is a product of individual choices
and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities” 12. These two approaches should
not be seen as excluding each other, but rather as the former including the latter: although
we reach sub-divisions sharing common features, everything starts with individual
choices operated by related thinkers.
Yet, from the point of view of an apparently broader definition, we may turn to
Werner Winter’s idea of considering the concept of selection as a criterion of
distinguishing among styles, thus implying the relationship of interdependence between
optional and obligatory features. Therefore, according to Winter, “a style may be said to
be characterized by a pattern of recurrent selections from the inventory of the optional
features of language. Various types of selection can be found: complete exclusion of an
optional element, obligatory inclusion of a feature optional elsewhere, varying degrees of
inclusion of a specific variant without complete elimination of competing features” 13.
This concept proves functional with stream-of-consciousness authors, where one may or

10
Michael Riffaterre, The Stylistic Function, in Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Linguistics,
The Hague, 1964, pp. 316-317
11
Archibald A. Hill, Poetry and Stylistics, in “Essays on the Language of Literature ”, Boston, 1967, p. 54
12
Seymour Chatman, Stylistics: Quantitative and Qualitative, “Style”, vol. I, No. 1, 1967, p. 30
13
Werner Winter, Styles as Dialects, in Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Linguistics, The
Hague, 1964, p. 324
may not come across what has been labelled as obligatory linguistic devices, although the
stylistic effect created definitely falls into the category represented by the discourse under
scrutiny.
There is, however, a perspective which differs to some extent from the ones
discussed so far (although not entirely), namely that of Barbara Sandig and Margret
Selting who state that “strictly speaking, style can only be spoken of in the plural […],
that is to say in respect of the range of possible variations, when formulating discourse.
[…] Our concept of style covers all kinds of meaningful variations in written and spoken
discourse”14. Once again, all such variations, regarded in their plurality, may be narrowed
down to an individual’s choices in manipulating language. A better solution may be that
of considering the complexity of the concept in all its approaches, depending on the
researcher’s interest.
To sum up, from a different and ‘open’ point of view, Leon Leviţchi offers us a
synthesis of the full ambiguous dimension of style in artfully proclaiming it “still to be
discussed”15, which best characterizes the concept in its complexity that is still to be
discovered.
There are many more definitions that may be included in this discussion but they
fall along the same lines as the previous ones. Although they all seem to have something
in common, they deal with too many concepts for us to be able to group them under one
single category and this is obvious if we think of the degree of ambiguity of the word
itself. What they do have in common is the image of style as a set of characteristics meant
to distinguish one element from another in a situation where all elements are part of a
larger unified group, class or category. Another point where all these definitions meet is
their focus on form rather than on content, enhancing the importance of the choices
performed and the results thus achieved.

14
Barbara Sandig, Margret Selting, Discourse Styles, in “Discourse as Structure and Process”, vol. I, SAGE
Publications, London, 1998, p. 138
15
Leon Leviţchi, Manualul traducătorului de limba engleză, Editura Teora, Bucureşti, 1993, p. 98
 Style and Deviation

Due to the focus on individual differences in the study of style, some members of
the linguistic community eventually reached the concept of style as deviation from norm.
Accepted by some, such as Chatman, the idea is rejected by Ducrot and Schaeffer,
although they do admit that some styles, especially the poetic ones, make use of stylistic
deviations so as to enhance the perceptibility of some verbal features, thus facilitating
their exemplifying semiotic function16.
However, perceptibility can be regarded as always being a differential function, i.e.
equally relying on marked and unmarked verbal elements; hence, from this perspective,
the style of a writing consists in the interaction between these two categories of elements,
both of which actually belong to the field of stylistic characteristics.
Moreover, when analyzing stylistic issues as deviation ones, we must pay special
attention to an important distinction, namely that between qualitative deviations (such as
ungrammaticality) and quantitative deviations (referring to the frequency of selection or
avoidance of some features). Although the former are more rarely to be found, it is more
difficult to identify the latter, as problems arise when trying to define the norm, i.e.
‘normal’ frequency, so as to discover the deviation from it.
Katie Wales also states that there is a relationship between style and the concept of
deviation, and, as already shown above, she takes into consideration a possible definition
of style as deviation from a norm. In her opinion, “deviation refers to divergence in
frequency from the norm, or the statistical average” 17. However, deviation is not to be
distinguished from deviance within the field of linguistics, although the former best suits
the areas of style and stylistics.
Wales’s important contribution with a view to clarifying this subfield of interest
becomes obvious with her questioning the concept of norm which is indeed rather
relative; hence, the ambiguity of classifying style as deviation from norm when there are
so many types of norms to be taken into consideration. Her suggestion as a solution to
this problem consists in going back to the theoretical frame and considering degrees of

16
Oswald Ducrot, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, op. cit., p. 422
17
Katie Wales, op. cit., p. 117
deviation against a set of norms rather than deviation from a general norm that is not to
be found in actual research.
From a similar point of view to those presented so far, I. R. Galperin reaches the
concept of style as deviance (he prefers this other synonym to deviation) as a result of
peculiar uses of language in poetry and emotive prose. He records a brief history of the
term, starting with the emergence of formalism in literature, to the constraints that
language imposes on thought, and eventually to the impossibility of the reader to decode
the message in some cases.
Nevertheless, when touching upon the intricate issue of norm, although he starts as
Wales does, i.e. questioning the nature of it, he reaches a definition of the term and
advances the theory that deviances later constitute variants of the norm which is thus seen
as an invariant. “The norm, therefore, should be regarded as the invariant of the
phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns circulating in language-in-
action at a given period of time”18. Such an approach may be regarded as being closely
connected with the idea of particularization of language use and of situations of
communication.
A different perspective belongs to E. Sapir who considers that the very
individuality of style is not achieved by breaking the rules, by deviating from accepted
norms but by treating them in a peculiar manner. As he puts it, “The greatest – or shall
we say the most satisfying – literary artists […] are those who have known
subconsciously how to fit or trim the deeper intuition to the provincial accents of their
daily speech. In them there is no effect of strain. Their personal ‘intuition’ appears as a
completed synthesis of the absolute art of intuition and the innate, specialized art of the
linguistic medium”19. Manipulation of language reaches artful realizations in literary
discourse and its complexity seems two-fold: on the one hand, we deal with the writer’s
skill in encoding the message, and, on the other, we are faced with the multiple and
sometimes very different interpretations that readers may come up with.
Whatever the view on norm or deviation may be, it is quite clear that the issue
enjoyed widely spread attention from the international linguistic community; the problem
remains that, where deviation or deviance alone seems to be a fairly clear concept, norm
18
I. R.Galperin, op. cit., p. 19
19
E.Sapir, Language, New York, 1921, p. 240
is a rather complex one, too intricate to be pinpointed into one clear definition. Hence, the
difficulty when trying to analyze deviation against norm(s).

Style Features

Relying upon the general view on style as a set of features meant to distinguish
elements from one another within a unified group, class, or category, we can easily
understand the fact that, as members of a certain linguistic community, we make use of
different style features when referring to the same object, idea, process, notion etc., i.e.
we take advantage of the linguistic alternatives available.
Therefore, according to Sandig and Selting20, we may distinguish among lexical,
syntactic, phonological and graphological, as well as pragmatic style features.
When tackling the issue of lexical style features, we refer to those alternatives
which only partially differ in meaning; they can be regarded as connotations
corresponding to stylistic levels that, in their turn, denote various social strata or activity
types. Regularly, the blending of such stylistic levels is forbidden but it is accepted when
it serves a certain stylistic purpose.
With respect to syntactic style features, we may discover that certain stylistic
choices rely exclusively on grammar in order to achieve their intended purpose, such as
ellipses in journalese or the fronting of locatives in tourist guidebooks.
We may include the use of rhyme and sound repetition and the matching of the
graphical form to the message being conveyed in the field of phonological and
graphological style features.
Last but not least, when analyzing pragmatic style features, we refer to the
possibility of operating choices when performing speech acts, and thus to the clarification
(by means of interpreting these choices) of the relationship established between author
and addressee, or, in other words, between emitter and receiver.
At the level of the literary text, however, the analyst is faced with a blending and an
interdependency of all (or almost all) style features that combine so as to achieve what
we may call the personal style of a certain author.

20
cf. Barbara Sandig, Margret Selting, op. cit., pp. 138-139
 Such trademarks imply complex and multi-layered inner workings of the language
that result in stylistic effects, may they be literary or linguistic; nevertheless, the
linguistic side of the coin may be regarded as the primary tool in such an enterprise.
Thus, the most interesting and challenging aspect to be tackled may prove to be this
very blending of style features, permanently doubled by a pleating of stylistic functions,
all these from a linguistic stylistics perspective.

Stylistics

Possible Definitions of Stylistics

Considering the fact that its object of study, i.e. style, is such an ambiguous
concept, we can very easily understand that trying to define stylistics actually means
starting a debate with a view to finding its place as a science proper. To begin with, there
are obviously three perspectives on the matter to be taken into consideration because of
their influencing the possible definitions of the concept: on the one hand, there are some
who believe that stylistics should be included either in the field of literature, or in that of
linguistics, without any possible compromise; others, on the other hand, regard it as an
interdisciplinary science, somehow at the border of the two; and finally, members of the
third party grant it an autonomous existence among other related sciences that it may
even include.
This direction based upon the ambiguity of style itself is adopted by Katie Wales
who states that stylistics is “the study of style; yet, just as style can be viewed in several
ways, so there are several different stylistic approaches. This variety in stylistics is due to
the main influences of linguistics and literary criticism. […] The goal of most stylistic
studies is not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake, but in
order to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text; or in order to
relate literary effects to linguistic ‘causes’ where these are felt to be relevant” 21. We thus
go back to the specificity of the researcher’s interest which may focus on various aspects
of the concept or consider its complexity.

21
Katie Wales, op. cit., pp. 437-438
 Furthermore, David Crystal defines stylistics along the same lines, i.e. as “the
linguistic study of what is considered to be ‘style’” 22 but he also gives it a specific goal to
achieve. In his opinion, besides the reader’s initial aesthetic response to the text, there is
the need for “some technique which will help to clarify the meaning of a text. Stylistics,
then, hopes to provide just such a technique of comprehensive analysis” 23. Considering
the fact that meaning and comprehension are relative concepts as well, we again face the
existence of different decodings of the same message by different receivers.
In his turn, Michael Toolan takes the same idea and applies it mostly to literary
stylistics, but his view on the concept is similar to that of Crystal, i.e. that it is actually
concerned with excellence of technique. Moreover, “one of the crucial things attempted
by stylistics is to put the discussion of textual effects and techniques on a public, shared
footing – a footing as shared and established […] as is available to informed language-
users. […] The other chief feature of stylistics is that it persists in the attempt to
understand technique, or the craft of writing”24. We are actually tackling the process of
breaking discourse into ever smaller units, which may enable us to understand and
analyze both the encoding and the possible decoding variants of a written or spoken
message.
Hence, in Toolan’s opinion, stylistics enables us to perform a “close examination of
the linguistic peculiarities of a text towards an understanding of the anatomy and
functions of language. The celebrated Socratic phrase ‘the examined life’ is often
invoked to remind us of our need to subject all our behaviour to rational and moral self-
scrutiny; stylistics nails its colours to an analogous slogan, the need for and the value of
‘the examined text’”25. The researcher should, thus, pay attention to remain in the realm
of the examined text as such, and refrain from allowing an author’s biographical details
influence the decoding of the written message he / she produced.
From a different perspective, H. G. Widdowson suggests a definition of stylistics
that takes us back to the interdisciplinary character of it, somewhere at the border
between literary criticism and linguistics. As he puts it, “by ‘stylistics’ I mean the study

22
David Crystal, W. F. Bolton (eds.), The English Language, Penguin Books, London, 1993, p. 214
23
David Crystal, W. F. Bolton (eds.), idem, pp. 214-215
24
Michael Toolan, Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics, Arnold Publishers, London and
New York, 1998, Preliminaries, p. ix
25
Michael Toolan, idem, p. ix
of literary discourse from a linguistic orientation and I shall take the view that
distinguishes stylistics from literary criticism on the one hand and linguistics on the other
is that it is essentially a means of linking the two and has (as yet at least) no autonomous
domain of its own. […] Stylistics, however, involves both literary criticism and
linguistics, as its morphological make-up suggests: the ‘style’ component relating it to the
former and the ‘istics’ component to the latter” 26. Not only does stylistics display a clear
interdisciplinary nature, but it also constantly draws its development from related
domains that allow it to expand.
Widdowson actually goes so far as to devise a diagram that expresses the
relationship among these three fields of interest, eventually drawing the conclusion that
“the purpose of stylistics is to link the two approaches by extending the linguist’s literary
intuitions and the critic’s linguistic observations and making their relationship explicit”27.

Disciplines: linguistics literary criticism

. .
. stylistics .
. .

Subjects: (English) language (English) literature

Moreover, taking the debate to one of its extremes, I. R. Galperin assigns stylistics
to the area of linguistics exclusively, and gives it two main directions of research as a
science proper. As he sees it, “Stylistics, also called linguo-stylistics, is a branch of
general linguistics. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: a) the investigation of
the inventory of special language media which by their ontological features secure the
desirable effect of the utterance, and b) certain types of texts (discourse) which due to the
choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of
the communication”28. This may be regarded as a case in point of the researcher’s interest

26
H. G Widdowson, Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature, Longman, London, 1997, p. 3
27
H. G. Widdowson, idem, pp. 4-5
28
I. R Galperin, op. cit., p. 9
that manifests clearly. The part of stylistics that the linguist is interested in gains the
upper hand and emerges as the main, if not the only, aspect taken into consideration.
Leon Leviţchi adds a modern touch to the same interdisciplinary theory on stylistics
by altering the terminology of what he calls a triad, i.e. author – work – reader has
become emitter – message – receiver. He notices that, if at the beginning the focus was
on the author/ emitter, more attention was later paid to the work/ message, only to lead
nowadays to an ever growing interest in the reader/ receiver’s response.
Therefore, as it is the case with the concept of style, stylistics manages to elude
clear definition of its profile as a science, of its exact tasks, which only leaves a lot of
room for interpretation according to everyone’s main interests.

Branches within Stylistics

1.2.2.1. Linguistic vs. Literary Stylistics

Ever since it first separated from other sciences, stylistics has displayed two
directions of investigation that are usually regarded as opposed: on the one hand,
language and its variable occurrences compared to a code; and the literary text where the
author expresses his / her individuality, on the other.
Literary stylistics. With respect to literary stylistics, it is relevant to mention that
there are many theorists who believe that the first and foremost task of stylistics is the
study of literature, of the literary discourse. This obviously means focus laid on
everything that is literary as opposed to the rest which is not, hence of no interest to
stylistics. However, this approach also implies the emergence of psychological stylistics
at the beginning, as the individual history of the author is not so easily detachable from
the picture.
Mention must be made here that, if we refer to the literary text as the perfect field
of research in stylistics, this implies our admitting that linguistic choices are operated
much more consciously and volitionally than in everyday speech. To put it differently,
this would mean contradicting Bally who was in favour of language stylistics.
 Nevertheless, Ducrot and Schaeffer define literary stylistics as “the analysis of
stylistic resources regarded as characteristic of literary practices” 29. In their opinion,
literary stylistics may actually be viewed as a stylistics of deviation, since it always
implies comparing a text as individuality against what we may call a collective norm.
Linguistic stylistics. On the contrary, linguistic stylistics focuses on stylistic choice
and may be defined as “the analysis and inventory of variable marks (opposed to the
obligatory marks of the code) that belong to a certain language” 30. It is of this direction
that Bally is one of the best representatives, as he sets out to study language in general,
not only that of literary texts.
Furthermore, considering stylistics an extension of linguistics, Bally applies it to
the field of expressive facts. His objective is that of going from language as an
abstraction to the level of speech, seen as affective language. Consequently, in his
opinion, the literary text is only to be looked upon as individual speech and studied as
such.
Thus, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the two branches of stylistics are
engaged in a highly interdependent relationship which must be taken into consideration
when attempting to perform stylistic analysis.
1.2.2.2. Further Distinctions
There is definitely much more to be said about different branches or directions
within stylistics besides this most important distinction of literary vs. linguistic stylistics.
Furthermore, there are theorists who believe that this very distinction relies on or seems
to ‘hide’ other oppositions. This is the case of Ducrot and Schaeffer who suggest three
more such oppositions to be considered, as they refer to various concepts related to or
within stylistics.
Collective vs. individual stylistics. Within the field of literary stylistics, when we
focus our analysis on individual features of a work or of an author, we actually make use
of individual stylistics in order to perform such analysis. However, the singularity of a
literary text or of a certain author (especially if we regard style as deviation) can only be
discovered and studied against a background of collective characteristics that belong to a

29
Oswald Ducrot, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, op. cit., p. 120
30
Oswald Ducrot, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, idem, p. 119
specific time interval, or literary trend, or literary group or school. This is where we have
to deal with collective stylistics.
Theoretical stylistics vs. stylistic criticism. So as to understand this distinction, we
must start from two aspects: on the one hand, linguistic stylistics is part of the attempt at
reaching the broader field of theoretical stylistics as included in the larger domain of
linguistics; on the other hand, the fact that literary stylistics has as a goal the study of the
individuality, the specificity of a work or of an author grants it a critical nature, not a
theoretical one. The real problem arises when realizing that we cannot separate the two:
in order to illustrate the stylistic properties of a literary text we make use of linguistic
pieces of evidence; in turn, as we analyze individual messages within language, we have
to resort to stylistic criticism.
General vs. literary stylistics. This third distinction relies, in the opinion of Ducrot
and Schaeffer, on the fact that we can oppose the concept of general stylistics to that of
stylistics who deal with various registers or discourse types. The distinction may
therefore be found in their fields of interest and analysis: General stylistics is regarded as
having taken over the field of what was called elocutio in rhetoric, whereas literary
stylistics studies the aesthetic aspect of stylistic properties rather than their affective
function.
Yet, Ducrot and Schaeffer’s additional distinctions are not the only ones to be
mentioned when tackling this issue; However, if the distinctions drawn so far fall into the
category of branches of stylistics, K. Wales’s may rather be considered as direction
within the field of stylistics.
Computational stylistics. As the author explains, this type of stylistics relies on
statistical and computer-aided methods so as to perform analysis on various issues
regarding style, and it actually may be included within computational linguistics. “One
popular study in computational stylistics is that known as stylometry, the investigation of
features such as word length and sentence length in different texts to determine
authorship”31.
Expressive stylistics. Being preserved, according to Wales, in the concept of style
as idiolect, expressive stylistics refers to “a general category of stylistic approaches

31
Katie Wales, op. cit., p. 85
which are speaker or writer-centred, and which imply an old-fashioned view of style
itself as revealing the personality or ‘soul’ of the writer”32.
Formalist vs. functionalist stylistics. What distinguishes these two directions is once
again their means in analyzing elements of their concern: the former is characterized by
heavy reliance on purely formal linguistic criteria, whereas the latter focuses on “stylistic
functions or effects or thematic significance of linguistic features in literary texts”33.
New stylistics. Although it is very difficult, in the author’s opinion, to keep
referring to something as being new considering the fact that new theories are constantly
issued, what she calls new stylistics may be the label of stylistics development in the
1970s. At that time, “stylistic studies […] were certainly influenced by structuralism, and
poetics, and reader-response criticism’34.
Radical stylistics. Introduced quite late, in 1982, the concept reveals a type of
stylistics which “is not simply concerned with stylistic effects, but with analyzing the
different ways in which ‘reality’ and ideology are constructed by language”35.
There is, however, a third party to deal with branches or directions within the same
field, namely Sandig and Selting; yet, mention must be made here that they focus
exclusively on linguistic stylistics and it is its branches that they show interest in.
Traditional stylistics. Based on structuralism which it makes use of as a method,
traditional stylistics displays two main tasks: “on the one hand, it aimed at a classification
of stylistic features for a given language […]; on the other hand, styles of literary texts
were analyzed with structuralist methods”36.
Pragmatic stylistics. As the two authors put it, “pragmatic stylistics is concerned
both with the recurrent constitution of particular speech acts rather than others, and with
particular features of the performance of speech acts, such as the particular wording of
requests”37.
Text linguistic stylistics. This type of stylistics, as well as the traditional one, proves
to have a double folded interest or field of investigation: it is “on the one hand concerned

32
Katie Wales, idem, p. 166
33
Katie Wales, idem, p. 198
34
Katie Wales, idem, p. 319
35
Katie Wales, idem, p. 389
36
Barbara Sandig, Margret Selting, op. cit., p. 143
37
Barbara Sandig, Margret Selting, idem, p. 143
with a particular choice of words or recurrent sentence structure […] or different kinds of
sentence connections. On the other hand, it is concerned with studies of particular aspects
of text which are shown to be stylistically relevant, such as the description or comparison
of the stylistic conventions of text types”38.
Sociolinguistic stylistics. When dealing with this subdomain, we must start from
social categories. Moreover, it can be seen as further subdividing it into two
sociolinguistic approaches, i.e. the alternates approach (based on different realization of
the same meaning or function) and the ethnographic one (relying on cultural
distinctiveness of speech functions).
Interactional stylistics. Interactional stylistics can only be thought of in close
relationship to conversational analysis which it borrowed concepts from, “in the
description of the recipient design and negotiation of interactional styles, for the
investigation of phenomena such as differing ‘politeness’, or ‘vagueness’ in
interaction”39.
This abundance of branches of and of directions within the field of stylistics
enhances once again the degree of complexity of the concept and reinforces the idea that
stylistic analysis may be regarded as one of the richest, the most challenging, yet the most
difficult types of analysis to be performed on a text.

Stylistic Functions

As it is the case with style and stylistics, the concept of stylistic function relies on
the interest with which and the direction from which we approach a text so as to perform
stylistic analysis. Our main concern is the linguistic realization of such functions and
their ways of pleating; therefore we shall deal mostly with linguistic stylistics.
Considering the fact that linguistic stylistics is not only very difficult to completely
separate from the literary one, but that it also touches upon many other related domains,
we shall take into account the stylistic functions suggested by Sandig and Selting:

38
Barbara Sandig, Margret Selting, idem, p. 144
39
Barbara Sandig, Margret Selting, idem, p. 145
 1. “To express one’s relation towards a situation, as, for
example, through the degree of formality and
institutionalization of speech activities;
2. To enable the self-presentation of the speaker / writer
as, for example, ‘involved’, ‘funny’, ‘educated’, ‘member
of a certain class or group’, ‘acting in a certain role’;
3. To tailor (design) activities for particular types of
recipients, such as children, foreigners, in-group members
4. To define a particular (kind of) relationship between
speaker or writer and recipient, for example, to establish
and maintain participant relations as ‘polite’, ‘distant’,
‘intimate’;
5. To set apart different kinds of activities in their
sequence”40.
We dare add a set of stylistic functions that fall more obviously under the category
of linguistic stylistics; trying to continue along the same line of numbering the functions,
we may distinguish:
6. morphological stylistic functions, dealing mostly with
stylistic values and uses of tenses, aspects and moods;
7. modality and exclamatory sentences;
8. modality expressed by the modal verbs;
9. syntactic stylistic functions, which dwell upon such
issues as coordination, subordination, proper building of a
sentence.
Nevertheless, such a list of stylistic functions may never be precisely pinpointed;
we must not forget, for instance, the importance and the influence of argot, jargon,
euphemisms, taboo words, etc., to mention just a few other factors that play an important
role in the shaping of the characteristic style of a certain author.
Therefore, it can be easily noticed that such an approach leaves room for
interpretation with respect to meaning and, although these functions do find their

40
Barbara Sandig, Margret Selting, idem, p. 140
linguistic realization at the level of the text, they are not always semantically explicit.
This is where the challenging part of the analysis lies, i.e. in discovering the implied
meanings and identifying them at the linguistic level of the text.

Related Domains

The issue of related domains has already been touched upon when considering the
close interdependent relationship among stylistics, linguistics and literary criticism,
which has already been dealt with in various sections of the paper.
However, as stylistics is an interdisciplinary science, other areas are, as well, of
influence to it. For example, according to Galperin, “in dealing with the objectives of
stylistics, certain pronouncements of adjacent disciplines such as theory of information,
literature, psychology, logic and to some extent statistics must be touched upon”41.
Moreover, there are more dichotomies worth mentioning, among which that of
stylistics and poetics sends us to the field of literary stylistics, as poetics can, on the one
hand, be understood as the study of the literary text regarded as speech as well, in
Aristotle’s opinion. On the other hand, though, Jakobson’s view on the literary text is that
of a building of a system of methods or means; hence, when referring to methods, we
implicitly include specific linguistic methods, and this means that we have to make use of
categories of linguistic analysis when embarking upon the study of a literary text.
Another close relationship is the one shared by stylistics and rhetoric and
pragmatics; we have already dealt with stylistics having evolved from rhetoric and having
taken over some its tasks. The interesting part of the relations refers to pragmatics that is
itself a ‘young’ science and from which stylistics may ‘borrow’ techniques of analysis, as
well as terminology.
Stylistics can also be related to semiotics which is conceived of as the theory of
signs. Furthermore, considering the fact that semiotics focuses on a relation of
signification, the relatedness of the two sciences becomes obvious in that stylistics has as
a task the building of a meaning linked to a text. This debate can be taken even further

41
I. R.Galperin, op. cit., p. 9
into the fields of pragmatics and discourse analysis, with a focus on the decoder of the
message when compared to the communicative intentions of the encoder.
One of the most ‘interdependent’ sciences with respect to stylistics is semantics and
their relationship should be quite obvious, as both sciences rely on meaning, its
realizations, its variations, its interpretations, and its different dimensions according to
the various perspectives it is considered from.
To conclude, the very existence of related domains is fairly easy to comprehend, as
modern theories have all proven that no science can exist or develop exclusively isolated;
there are always larger domains where it separated from, and fields of influence that
leave their marks on the evolving science.