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Stylistics and Discourse Analysis

By Khalid Shamkhi

1.Styleis a term used to refer to the personal use an individual makes in speech

or writing of the language available to him. (Hartmann and Stork ,1972). In other

words it refers the choices a speaker or writer makes from among the phonologicalgrammatical and lexical resources of his language(Beogrande and

Dressler,1981:16)

The study of style is called stylistics .Traditionally ,it was carried out to

investigate variations in usage among literary and other texts, or more generally

any systematic variation, in either speech or writing which relates to the type ofdiscourse or its context(Matthews ,2007 :385).Thus ,public lectures have a style

different from that of casual conversations among friends .However ,the words

style and stylistics have now the specialized , narrow usage of linguistics applied toliterature .According to Katie Wales(2001) the goal of most stylistics is not simplyto 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 relateliterary effects to linguistic 'causes' where these are felt to be relevant.

2.Discourse , according to Crystal (2003:141),is a continuous stretch of

language larger than the sentence. Leech et.al.(1982:133) refer to discourse aschunks of language in actual use . Discourse may be spoken or written literary or

non-literary, eg an interview ,a novel, a speech by a politician, a lecture to

students or any other series of speech events in which successive sentences orutterances hang together(Matthews,2007:107) .

Discourse Analysis (henceforth DA)is the study which aims at discoveringlinguistic regularities in discourses using grammatical , phonological and semantic

criteria(eg cohesion, anaphora, inter-sentence connectivity) (Crystal,2003:141) .Toput it in another way, DA deals with the various devices used by the speakers and

writers when they put sentences together to form a coherent and cohesive whole

(Aitchison,1999:97):

3.Discourse Analysisand Stylisticsare broad-based disciplines which deal with

the functional aspects of language. Both aim to show why and how the text means

what it means (linguistically). While D.A. analyzes what is communicated in

Discourse, Stylistics analyzes how it is communicated. In Stylistics we are more

concerned with showing the uniqueness of the text we are analyzing .On the other

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hand in discourse analysis we are concerned with showing how a text analyzed is

not unique .It is typical of its kind. Thus studies of classroom interaction and

doctor-patient interaction aim to arrive at generalizations that characterize such

discourses.

The two disciplines often interact with each other. Thus Discourse-Stylistics is

concerned with the analysis of communication to reveal its function, using various

tools of interpretation including textual peculiarities. Such analysis enables us to

appreciate style. Basically, it is concerned with the identification, description and

explanation of stylistic features in a given text or discourse situation(Opara ,2005).

ReferencesAitchison , Jean(1999)Linguistics .London: Hodder Headline.Beogrande and Dressler(1981)Introduction to Text Linguistics. English

Translation. London: LongmanCrystal, David(2003)A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.5thed .

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing LTD.Hartmann ,R.R.K. & Stork ,F.C.(1972)A Dictionary of Language and

Linguistics. London: Applied Science Publishers LTD.Leech ,G.,Margaret ,Deuchar &Robert Hoogenraad (1982)English

Grammar for Today. London: Macmillan Publishers LTD.

Opara, S. C. (2005) Discourse-Stylistics of Speech in Buchi Emechela's Prose

Fiction.An Unpublished Ph.D Thesis, University of lbadan.

Wales, Katie (2001)A Dictionary of Stylistics.Essex:Pearson Education Ltd.

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