Name: Radwa Ayman Ahmed

Chapter One (Style and Choice)

Although it is important to consider the use of the word “style” in the past, readers should
not be slaves to verbal definitions, which are useful in terms of encapsulating a particular
concept or theory. Due to this, this chapter aims to work through definitions of different
concepts and theories towards a richer appreciation of literary works.

1.1 The Domain of Style:

Generally speaking, the word “style” refers to the way in which language is used in a
given context, by a given person, for a given purpose. According to Saussure’s distinction
between “langue” and “parole”: langue is the system of rules of a language, while parole is
the particular use of that system by its speakers. Hence, “style” belongs to parole. However,
this definition of “style” is so generic and should be narrowed to fulfill the purpose of this book.

Firstly, in the broadest sense, style can be applied to spoken and written language, and to
literary and everyday variations of language, but traditionally, it is associated with written
literary texts, and that shall be the focus of the analysis in this book. Secondly, the term style is
sometimes used to refer to a specific period, a particular writer, or a specific school of writing,
such as the epistolary style, or eighteenth-century style. To limit readers’ understanding of
“style”, this book shall focus on the authorial style. Thirdly, style is a relational term, for
example, the style of x refers to the linguistic characteristics of x in relation to its era (the
stylistic domain). Due to the difficulty of identifying a common set of linguistic habits in the
sheer bulk of prose writing, this book shall focus on the style of texts, which are short extracts
from a literary work. In texts, readers can study the style in more detail and with more
systematic attention to the linguistic choices made by the writer.

1.2 Stylistics:
Stylistics, which is defined as the linguistic study of style, aims to identify the relation
between language and artistic function. Linguistic analysis answers the question “why does the
author choose this form of expression?” while the literary analysis answers the question “how
such an aesthetic effect is achieved through the language?” The aim of stylistics is to relate the
critic’s concern on the aesthetic appreciation to the linguist’s concern on the linguistic
description. Spitzer argued that the motion in this “philological circle” is cyclic whereby
linguistic observation stimulates a literary insight, and whereby the literary insight in its turn
stimulates further linguistic observation.
1.3 Style and Content:
Different definitions of style involve conflicting views or theories of style in literature.
The most widespread theories are dualism, monism, and pluralism. The main concept of
dualism rests on an assumed separation between form and content. In contrast, monism
emphasizes the unity of form and content: they are like body and soul cannot be separated.

1.3.1 Style as the “dress of thought”: one kind of dualism

According to this concept style is “adornment” or “covering” of thought or meaning,
which frequently appears in Renaissance literary analysis.
For example, these lines are taken from Lyly’s description of his hero in “Euphues”

It is obvious that what attracts readers in this extract is the aesthetics of form, rather than
meaning. Lyly used the literary technique of “parallelism”, such as “finest, fairest, sweetest”
which could be considered redundant since it does not add a new meaning. Nevertheless, it does
emphasize the increasing weight of qualities listed. This is an example of how the form and
meaning can be separated; the poetic device “parallelism” is used here as an extra adornment
to the main thought.
Another implication of the “dress of thought” concept is that a text can be written in plain,
neutral style. That is a manner of writing in which there is no style. In other words, the content
is presented in its nakedness. For example, Eliza’s “not bloody likely” in Pygmalion by Shaw
has a style while an equivalent monosyllable “no” does not. Barthes referred to this manner as
“writing at degree zero”. This implication, which considers style as an “optional extra”, is not
so accurate. In more detail, although some grammatical choices are more neutral than others,
such as the use of third-person pronouns (he- she- they), they are still linguistic choices that
have implication and worth being examined in stylistics. Thus, the idea of “style” as an
“additional extra must be firmly rejected.

1.3.2 Style as manner of expression: another kind of dualism.

According to this concept, each writer makes choices of expression, and the writer’s style
resides in these choices. Dualists believe that there can be different ways to convey the same
meaning, whereas monists consider that any alteration to the form should lead to a change in the
meaning. Ohmann, one of dualism proponents, argued that words on the page can be differently
arranged without corresponding difference in the content. He claimed that these three
paraphrases are synonymous.

To back up his theory, he appealed to transformational grammar, arguing that transformational

rules determine style with no change in the content. One of these transformations is changing an
active structure into passive
ex: Columbus discovered America=America was discovered by Columbus.

According to Ohmann, since these transformations can be applied to the same structure,
they are paraphrases to the same idea. Consequently, the style of a writer should be analyzed
through judging what is written against what might have been written (what transformations are
used and what others are left out). Ohmann illustrated his idea in one of Fulkner’s texts.
Ohmann re-wrote Fulkner’s text after removing all transformations and replacing complex
structures with simple ones. He pointed out that the elimination of these transformations also
eliminates Fulkner’s style. However, Ohmann’s assumption that transformations represent
paraphrase relations has been undermined, for example these two sentences do not have the
same meaning.
- Many arrows did not hit the target ≠ The target was not hit by many arrows.

That is why many critics argue that transformations have a more complex relation than
Ohmann assumed. Dualists use “concept” and “meaning” loosely and interchangeably, which
is somewhat misleading. It is more useful to use the word “sense” to refer to the conceptual,
paraphrasable meaning and the word “significance” to refer to what is communicated to the
world by a given sentence or text. Dualists usually focus on the significance of using a
particular structure which can be referred to as “stylistic value”. Dualism’s view can be
summed up in this formula
Sense+ stylistic value= (total) significance.
1.3.3 the Inseparability of style and content: monism
Dualism’s ideas about paraphrases can be challenged in poetry since it is problematic
to paraphrase poetic devices, such as metaphor, irony, or ambiguity. Simply, a paraphrase
cannot convey the literal and hidden meanings of a poetic line. Even Hawkes described
metaphor as “fanciful embroidery of the facts”. Therefore, monism finds its strongest ground in
poetry, where these poetic devices cannot be paraphrased. According to monism, the content of
a work of art can only be expressed by itself. The critic Lodge adopted a monist stance and
expressed that prose and poetry are not different and both should follow these principles:

1- it is impossible to paraphrase literary writing

2- It is impossible to translate literary writing.
3- It is impossible to divorce the appreciation of a literary work from the appreciation of its
style.
Based on Lodge’s concept, there is no difference between the kind of choice between
dark/ fair and the choice between synonyms such as dark and swarthy. All a writer’s choices
are of equal importance.

1.4 Comparing dualism and monism:

Although the dualism approach sounds more suitable for prose writing while the monism
approach is better used with poetry, this distinction is oversimplified: some prose types are more
“poetic” than other poetry types. That is why it is better to classify a literary work based on its
poetic language not on its genre. Antony Burgess divided novelists into two classes: Class 1 and
Class 2. A Class 1 novelist is the one whose literary work is of zero quality and transparent,
whereas a Class 2 novelist is the one whose work is made of words as much as characters. In
other words, Class 2 novels are full of ambiguities, puns, and metaphors. Burgess translated the
language of the opening of “A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” into Class 1 language
to support his claim. That being said, his classification should not be taken seriously since he
himself acknowledged that the two classes overlap. Meanwhile, The Prague school of poetics
has distinguished the “poetic function” of language by its “foregrounding” or
“deautomatization” which mean the deliberate deviation from the linguistic or literary code.
Foregrounding techniques are not limited to poetic devices, such as simile, metaphor, or
alliteration, it can be found in denying the normally expected clues of context and coherence,
such as using childish language to describe the context. The aesthetic theory of foregrounding
or deautomatization sheds light on the importance of recognizing the transparent and opaque
qualities of prose style. It is justified that the creativity of an artist requires the destruction of
rules and expectations. However, this creativity also requires some creative observation from
readers to fill in the gaps of sense with a logic of their own. Consequently, for most literary
novels, neither the dualist nor the monist doctrine will be entirely satisfactory. There is a need
for an approach that avoids the weakness of both.
1.5 Pluralism: analysis style in terms of function:
According to pluralists, language perform a number of different functions, and any piece
of language is the result of choices made on different functional levels. Hence a pluralist
distinguishes various strands of meaning according to various functions. The popular
assumption that language serves to communicate thoughts or ideas is so simplistic. Some kinds
of language have a referential function (such as newspaper reports); others have a persuasive
function (such as advertising); others have a social function (such as casual conversations).
Pluralists argue that language is intrinsically multifunctional, so that even the simplest language
conveys more than one kind of meaning. For example: “Is your father feeling better?” may be
simultaneously referential (referring to a person and his illness), directive (demanding a reply),
and social (maintaining a bond of sympathy between speaker and hearer).

Proponents of pluralism presented many classifications of these functions. First, I.A.

Richards (1929) distinguished four types of function, and four types of meaning: sense, feeling,
tone, and intention. Second, Jakobson (1961) distinguished six types of function (referential,
emotive, conative, phatic, poetic, metalinguistic). Third, more recently, Halliday’s functional
model of language has acknowledged three major functions: ideational, interpersonal, and
textual. Although Halliday did not commit himself to a functional definition of literary
language, he recognizes that different kinds of literary writing may foreground different
functions.

Halliday’s analysis of the language of William Golding’s novel The Inheritors is used
in this chapter to illustrate the relation of pluralism to dualism and monism. Golden’s novel
deals with the prehistoric struggle for survival between homo sapiens and Neanderthal man,
resulting in the latter’s extinction. Golden presents the language of Lok, a Neanderthal
character, as that of a man with a narrow-minded perception, which is considerably different
from the language he uses to present homo sapiens. Lok’s view of things lacks sense of cause
and effect. To present the limited universe of Lok, Golding uses limited grammar structures.
Lok’s language lacks clauses with human subject; most of his clauses are with inanimate
subjects or intransitive verbs, such as “the pushes twitched again.” “a stick rose upright.”
Furthermore, there are no adverbs or adverbial phrases except those of time and place.

Halliday claimed that the theme of the whole novel is “transitivity”: the linguistic pattern
of choices realizes a primitive pattern of cognition. Halliday’s analysis relates linguistic
observation to literary effect. Moving to dualism, the difference between sentences like “a stick
rose upright.” “he raised his bow.” is not something that Ohmann could consider as a matter of
style. These sentences contrast grammatically and cannot be considered by any logical sense as
paraphrases of one another. Halliday’s concept, which considers all linguistic choices
meaningful, can be regarded as a more sophisticated version of monism. However, monism has
a great flaw which is treating the literary text as an undifferentiated whole, that cannot be
paraphrased in different terms. Apparently, pluralism has a modest position since it presents
how different language choices are interrelated within a network of functional choices. Perhaps
it is better to say that pluralism has a theory of language while monism does not. Pluralism has
an advantage over dualism since the latter can say nothing about how language can be used to
create a cognitive view of things.

1.6 A multilevel approach to style:

Dualism has some advantages: it argues that two pieces of language can be seen as
alternative ways of saying the same thing. That might be referred to as “stylistic variants” with
different “stylistic values”. What is more, Halliday’s approach does not identify the
“referential language” that is used to refer to the fictional universe. For example, for Halliday,
the names of pigs in Animal Farm are a matter of style, even whether to call a character fair or
dark-haired is a matter of choice, which can be a bit misleading. It is more reasonable,
therefore, to say that some aspects of language have a referential function, such as the choice
between “pond or river” while others have a stylistic function. Since it is up to a writer to
furnish his fictional universe as they want, this book is more concerned with the language
choices that do not change this fictional universe.

To conclude, although dualism, monism, and pluralism can be considered as contrasting

approaches, each one has something to add for a comprehensive view of style. To have a
practical study of literary texts, it is better to take insights from these approaches in a multilevel,
multifunctional view of study.