Stylistics is the study of varieties of language whose properties position that language in context. For example, the language of advertising, politics, religion, individual authors, etc., or the language of a period in time, all belong in a particular situation. In other words, they all have ‘place’.

Stylistics also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialisation, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.

Other features of stylistics include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and people’s dialects, descriptive language, the use of grammar, such as the active voice or passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular language registers, etc.

Many linguists do not like the term ‘stylistics’. The word ‘style’, itself, has several connotations that make it difficult for the term to be defined accurately. However, in Linguistic Criticism (1996), Roger Fowler makes the point that, in non-theoretical usage, the word stylistics makes sense and is useful in referring to an enormous range of literary contexts, such as John Milton’s ‘grand style’, the ‘prose style’ of Henry James, the ‘epic’ and ‘ballad style’ of classical Greek literature, etc. (Fow'r, 185) In addition, stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between the form and effects within a particular variety of language. Therefore, stylistics looks at what is ‘going on’ within the language; what the linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals.

Consider the quotation below:
‘I was proceeding on my beat when I accosted the suspect whom I had reason to believe might wish to come down to the station and help with enquiries in hand.’

This language only belongs in a UK policeman’s notebook and is usually read out in a court of law. The sentence is not only formal but highly conventional for the location in which it is found. In addition, it is also extremely ambiguous (a common feature of so-called conventunal language). Why ‘accosted’, for example, and not ‘arrested’, ‘collared’, ‘nabbed’, ‘nicked’ or even ‘pinched’? Either of which would express more accurately what occurred in language more suitable for the typical British ‘bobby’, rather than the pre-scripted text that is simply being recited ‘parrot fashion’.

As well as conventional styles of language there are the unconventional – the most obvious of which is poetry. In Practical Stylistics (1992), HG Widdowson examines the traditional form of the epitaph, as found on headstones in a cemetery. For example:

His memory is dear today

As in the hour he passed away.

(Ernest C. Draper ‘Ern’. Died 4.1.38)

(W'son, 6)

Widdowson makes the point that such sentiments are usually not very interesting and suggests that they may be dismissed as ‘crude verbal carvings’ (W’son, 3), as does the English poet Thomas Gray in his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751), who refers to them as ‘uncouth rhymes’. Nevertheless, Widdowson recognises that they are a very real attempt to convey feelings of human loss and preserve affectionate recollections of a beloved friend or family member. However, what may be seen as poetic in this language is not so much in the formulaic and institutional phraseology but in where it appears. The verse may be given undue reverence precisely because of the sombre situation in which it is placed. Widdowson suggests that, unlike words set in stone in a graveyard, poetry is unorthodox language that vibrates with inter-textual implications. (W’son, 4)

This is by Ogden Nash:

Beneath this slab

John Brown is stowed.

He watched the ads,

And not the road.

‘Lather As You Go’, Collected Verse (1952)

Nash is satirising the form. The epitaph is humorous but it is perhaps more funny because of the solemn location with which this language is normally associated.

Below is a standard rhyme that might be found inside a conventional Valentine’s card:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

[Tum-tee tum-tee tum],

I love you.

We might ask why roses for the characteristic example of ‘redness’ instead of perhaps a British pillar box, which is considerably redder than the petals of any rose? Or, indeed, why violets as the archetypical illustration of ‘blueness’ and not, say, the distinctive cobalt hue of the shirt worn by the tragic 1978 Scottish World Cup squad in Argentina? Maybe because roses and violets are traditional tokens of romance, and their association with particular colours (as not all roses are red, nor all violets blue) reinforces the imagery: the red of a lover’s lips, the blue of their eyes, or the sea, or the sky, etc. – all very romantic stuff. The conventional symbolism of the verse is certainly appropriate for the setting of a Valentine’s card, but is this poetry?

Here is Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Eagle’ (a fragment):

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Poems, (1851)

As with the eagle, Tennyson leaves the reader balancing precariously on the end of the first verse with the single word ‘stands’. Again, however, why ‘like a thunderbolt’ for an appropriate simile for the description of the eagle’s decent and not, for example, ‘a brick’, or ‘a stone’, or 'a sack of potatoes’? Perhaps the answer lies in the word’s syllabic (or syllable) structure: ‘thun-der-bolt’.

In ‘Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics’ in Style in Language (1960), Roman Jakobson explores the concept the ‘emotive’ or ‘expressive’ function of the language, a direct expression of the speaker’s attitude toward what they are speaking about, which tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion. (J’son, 354) The distinction here can be made between the spoken word and written text, spoken language having a possibly greater ‘emotive’ function by emphasising aspects of the language in its pronunciation. For example, in English stressed or unstressed words can produce a variety of meanings. Consider the sentence ‘I never promised you a rose garden’ (the title of the autobiographical novel by Joanne Greenberg, which was written under the pen name of Hannah Green. 1964). This has a multitude of connotations depending on how the line is spoken. For example:

I never promised you a rose garden

I never promised you a rose garden

I never promised you a rose garden

I never promised you a rose garden

I never promised you a rose garden

Or even:

I never promised you a rose garden

And there are many more besides these.

In ‘Poetic Effects’ from Literary Pragmatics (1991), the linguist Adrian Pilkington analyses the idea of ‘implicature’, as instigated in the previous work of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. Implicature may be divided into two categories: ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ implicature, yet between the two extremes there are a variety of other alternatives. The strongest implicature is what is explicitly implied by the speaker or writer, while weaker implicatures are the wider possibilities of meaning that the hearer or reader may conclude.

Pilkington’s ‘poetic effects’, as he terms the concept, are those that achieve most relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures and not those meanings that are simply ‘read in’ by the hearer or reader. Yet the distinguishing instant at which weak implicatures and the hearer or reader’s conjecture of meaning diverge remains highly subjective. As Pilkington says: ‘there is no clear cut-off point between assumptions which the speaker certainly endorses and assumptions derived purely on the hearer’s responsibility.’ (P’ton, 53) In addition, the stylistic qualities of poetry are often as important to the understanding of a poem as are Pilkington’s ‘poetic effects’. For example, the first verse of Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘The Mower’s Song’ (1611) runs:

My mind was once the true survey

Of all these meadows fresh and gay,

And in the greenness of the grass

Did see its thoughts as in a glass

When Juliana came, and she,

What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.

Miscellaneous Poems (1681)

The strong implicature that is immediately apparent is that Marvell is creating a pastiche (distinct from parody) of the pastoral form: the narrator being the destructive figure of Demon the Mower and not the protective character of the traditional pastoral shepherd. The poem is also highly symbolic. In literary criticism grass is symbolic of flesh, while the mower’s scythe with which he works represents human mortality (other examples being Old Father Time and the Grim Reaper). Even the text on the page can be seen as a visual representation of the Mower’s agricultural equipment: the main body of each verse is suggestive of the wooden shaft of the scythe and the last flowing line of each verse, the blade. (This visual similarity of the text on the page and the poem’s subject is known as concrete poetry.) However, it is the concluding phrase, repeated in every stanza, that is most stylistically effective. This long sweeping line that extends beyond the margins of each verse does not simply recall the action of the scythe through the grass, but occurs at the exact moment of every pass and further illuminates the mower’s physical and emotional disquiet. These conceits do not appear by accident and are precisely intended by the poet to draw attention to the ‘poetic effects’ of the verse.

Here is another example from William Shakespeare’s ‘71’, Sonnets (1609):

No longer mourn for me when I am dead,

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

On the face of things the poet appears to be saying: ‘When I have passed away, do not grieve for me.’ A full stop and the end of the first line, and nothing further, would certainly be enough to convey and satisfactory conclude the principal sentiment. Yet there is not a full stop. Indeed, there is no full stop until the end of line eight!

Looking at these first four lines, the first is a full sentence but ends with a comma. The first and second lines taken together are not a complete sentence and encourage the reader to continue onto the third line, which, taken with the first and second lines, is still not a complete sentence. The forth line concludes the sentence but ends with a semicolon, again persuading the reader on to the fifth line, which begins with an abrupt exclamation, reinforcing the opening statement and continuing to hold the reader’s attention:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so,

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

Here, it appears that Shakespeare is simply paraphrasing the first three lines with the additional forth line showing concern for the reader’s emotions should they spend too much time reminiscing over the dead poet. The contradiction is puzzling. Why should the poet repeat what is apparently being explicitly asked of the reader not to do? And, again, the final four lines emphasise the point, once more beginning with the seemingly by now obligatory exclamation:

Oh, if (I say) you look upon this verse,

When I perhaps compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan

And mock you with me after I am gone.

Furthermore, the poet asks the reader to not even repeat the ‘name’ of ‘the hand that writ it’, while the ending is tinged with more than a degree of false modesty within the realm of the unsentimental ‘wise world’. Obviously, what on the surface appears to be one contention turns out to be quite the opposite. Shakespeare, far from telling to reader to forget him following his demise, is actually saying: ‘Remember me! Remember me! Remember me!’ And he does this through deceptively unconventional language that progresses and grows continuously into the traditional sonnet form.

Although language may appear fitting to its context stylistics also reveals itself in many grammatical disguises. Widdowson points out that in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1798), the mystery of the Mariner’s abrupt appearance is sustained by an idiosyncratic use of tense. (W’son, 40) For instance, in the first line Coleridge does not say: ‘There was ancient Mariner’ or ‘There arrived an ancient Mariner’, but instead not only does he immediately place the reader at the wedding feast, Coleridge similarly throws the Mariner abruptly into the middle of the situation:

It is an ancient Mariner

And he stoppeth one of three.

- ‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,

And I am the next of kin;

The guests are met, the feast is set:

May’st hear the merry din.’

Coleridge’s play with tense continues in stanzas four to six, as he swaps wildly from past to present and back again.

He holds him with his skinny hand,

‘There was a ship,’ quoth he.

‘Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!’

Eftsoons his hands dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye -

The Wedding-guests stood still,

And listens like a three years’ child:

The Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone

He cannot choose but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner.

Lyrical Ballads (1798)

The Mariner holds the wedding-guest with his ‘skinny hand’ in the present tense, but releases it in the past tense; only to hold him again, this time with his ‘glittering eye’, in the present. (W’son, 41) And so on, back and forth like a temporal tennis ball, but all adding to the enigma. The suggestion could be made that Coleridge was simply careless with the composition and selected these verb forms at random. However, the fact is that they are there in the text of the poem, and, as Coleridge himself would recognise, everything in a poetic text carries an implication of relevance. (W’son, 41)

Another aspect of stylistics is, as in the poem ‘I saw a Peacock’, when the meaning only becomes clear when the context is revealed.

I saw a peacock with a fiery tail

I saw a blazing comet drop down hail

I saw a cloud with ivy circled round

I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground

I saw a *pismire swallow up a whale *[ant]

I saw a raging sea brim full of ale

I saw a Venice glass sixteen foot deep

I saw a well full of men’s tears that weep

I saw their eyes all in a flame of fire

I saw a house as big as the moon and higher

I saw the sun even in the midst of night

I saw the man who saw this wondrous sight

‘A Person of Quality’, Westminster Drollery (1671)

If we read the poem like this, it almost makes sense - but not quite. The reason is, perhaps, because we as readers are conditioned to reading poetry in a specific way, conventionally – line by line. By altering the phrases in each line, the descriptions are made coherent.

I saw a peacock

With a fiery tail I saw a blazing comet

Drop down hail I saw a cloud

With ivy circled round I saw a sturdy oak

Creep on the ground I saw a pismire

Swallow up a whale I saw a raging sea

Brim full of ale I saw a Venice glass

Sixteen foot deep I saw a well full of men’s tears that weep

I saw their eyes

All in a flame of fire I saw a house

As big as the moon and higher I saw the sun

Even in the midst of night

I saw the man who saw this wondrous sight

The anonymous narrator, sitting drinking by a fire and gazing at his mirror image in the ‘Venice glass’, is commenting on the reflected images that he sees in language that is similarly inverted.

There are, however, two important points worth mentioning with regard to the stylistician’s approach to interpreting poetry, and they are both noted by PM Wetherill in Literary Text: An Examination of Critical Methods (1974). The first is that there may be an over-preoccupation with one particular feature that may well minimise the significance of others that are equally important. (W’ill, 133) The second is that any attempt to see a text as simply a collection of stylistic elements will tend to ignore other ways whereby meaning is produced. (W’ill, 133) Nevertheless, meaning in poetry is conveyed through a multitude of language alternatives that manifest themselves as printed words on the page, style being one such feature. Subsequently, the stylistic elements of poetry can be seen as unconventional language that is beyond what is expected and customary. Poetry can be both sublime and even ridiculous yet still transcend established social values. Poetry is an original and unique method of communication that we use to express our thoughts, feelings and experiences.

In ‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946), George Orwell writes against the use of so-called ‘conventional’ language as, in doing so, there is the danger that the traditional ‘style’ of language that is seemingly appropriate to a specific context will eventually overpower its precise meaning. In other words, the stylistic qualities of language will degenerate the meaning through the overuse of jargon and familiar, hackneyed and/or clichéd words and phrases.

Orwell says:
It [modern language] consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the result presentable by sheer humbug. (Orwell, 150)

Widdowson notices that when the content of poetry is summarised it often refers to very general and unimpressive observations, such as ‘nature is beautiful; love is great; life is lonely; time passes’, and so on. (W’son, 9) But to say:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end ...

William Shakespeare, ‘60’.

Or, indeed:

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days months, which are the rags of time ...

John Donne, ‘The Sun Rising’, Poems (1633)

This language gives us a new perspective on familiar themes and allows us to look at them without the personal or social conditioning that we unconsciously associate with them. (W’son, 9) So, although we may still use the same exhausted words and vague terms like ‘love’, ‘heart’ and ‘soul’ to refer to human experience, to place these words in a new and refreshing context allows the poet the ability to represent humanity and communicate honestly. This, in part, is stylistics, and this, according to Widdowson, and it seems reasonable to agree, is the point of poetry. (W’son, 76).

[edit] References and related reading

Richard Bradford. 1997. Stylistics (London and New York: Routledge)
Roger Fowler. 1996. Linguistic Criticism, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Roman Jakobson. 1960. 'Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics', Style in Language, Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)
Brian Lamont. 2005. First Impressions (Edinburgh: Penbury Press)
Geoffrey Leech and Michael H. Short. 1981. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose (London: Longman)
George Orwell. 1964. ‘Politics and the English Language’, Inside the Whale and Other Essays (London: Penguin Books)
Guy Cook 1994. Discourse and Literature: the Interplay of Form and Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Adrian Pilkington. 1991. ‘Poetic Effects’, Literary Pragmatics, ed. Roger Sell (London: Routledge)
Michael Toolan. 1998. Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics (London: Hodder Arnold)
Katie Wales. 2001. A Dictionary of Stylistics, 2nd edition, (Harlow: Longman)
PM Wetherill. 1974. Literary Text: An Examination of Critical Methods (Oxford: Basil Blackwell)
HG Widdowson. 1992. Practical Stylistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
The Stylistics Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present, 1996. Jean Jacques Weber ed., (London: Arnold Hodder)