CHAPTER – II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.0 Introduction

This chapter deals with a review of related literature on the linguistic

approach ‘Stylistics’. The researcher has attempted to discuss the concept
of stylistics, its roots and genesis. In the beginning, the researcher
discusses the historical respective of stylistics supported by stylistic
theories and literary movements related to text analysis such as Russian
Formalism, Prague School, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, etc.
According to many scholars, the term ‘Elocution’ which means ‘style’ in
classical rhetoric is the first source and root for the term ‘stylistics’.
Various scholars such as Charless Bally, Ferdinand de Saussure , Leo
Spitzer, Roman Jackobson, Halliday etc. are the real developers of
stylistics; different approaches to stylistics made by these scholars. The
efforts of these scholars culminated in theories and helped to develop
methods for the analysis and study of the literary works. They all
introduce their own points of view and methods of interpretation. This
chapter also introduces earlier works on stylistics, current studies on
stylistics, previous works on style in literature, and concludes with the
discussion of current studies on style in poetry.

2.1 Stylistics: Historical Perspective

“Although stylistics is regarded as a relatively new branch of philology,

its roots go back as far as Ancient Greece and Rome, where the
rhetoricians cultivated the art of clear, forcible and elegant use of
language”(Lehtsalue et al. 1973: 15). This tradition was also continued by
the medieval rhetoricians. In the eighteenth century an individualistic-
psychological view on style and stylistics made its appearance. According
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to this view, style bears the stamp of individual usage: every writer has a
unique pattern of abilities and habits that constitute his style.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the

appearance of a utilitarian approach to stylistics remotely linked with
ancient and medieval rhetoric. The tendency to consider stylistics as an
applied science has been particularly marked in the English speaking
countries, where it was believed that the principal aim of a course in
stylistics was to improve the reader’s style and the style of a text book to
show him how better to express his thoughts. The discipline label
‘stylistics’ became popular in the 1950s, and was conceived as a discrete
area of applied linguistics/linguistics. ‘General stylistics’ (Sebeok 1960)
was so interested in all forms and types of language text, written and
spoken, distinguished from the sub-area of literary stylistics. In fact, early
stylistics was characterized by linguistic structuralism, that stresses the
structural properties and features of texts at different linguistic levels
(phonological, lexical, grammatical and prosodic). Stylistics was based
on taxonomies-lists of features, levels and functions of language. This
section shows and discusses theoretical issues and theories relating to the
literary language and the text analysis.

2.1.1 Russian Formalism

Russian formalism is considered one of the movements of interpretation

and literary criticism. It originated during the second decade of the
twentieth century in Russia and remained active until 1930. The
proponents of this school focus on the independent nature of literature
and so the proper study and analysis of literature was neither a reflection
of its author’s life, nor as a byproduct of the cultural or historical
environment in which it was found or created. In this side, the members

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of a formalist approach of literature try not only to define and isolate the
formal features of language (in both prose and poetry) but also to check
the way in which particular aesthetically motivated devices (such as
defamiliarization) determined the artfulness or literariness of an object.
More particularly, this movement of literary criticism is concerned with
the text itself and all the literary aspects of the text. McCauley (1997)
states that the Russian formalists dealt with words and literary features
than actual meanings of words themselves.

The members of this movement were called ‘formalists’. Formalism was

explained and interpreted as a term that implies limitations. Cuddon
(1998) emphasizes that the members of this movement applied this term
‘formalism’ derogatively because it focuses on the formal patterns and
technical tools of literature and the exception of its social value and
subject matter. This movement included two distinguished scholarly
groups, the first one is known as ‘Moscow Linguistic Circle’, that was
founded by Roman Jakobson, Peter Bogatyrev and Grigorii Vinokur in
1915. The second group was termed Petersburg Opayaz which appeared
a year later (1916) by scholars such as Victor Shklovskii, Victor
Vinogradov, Lurii Tynianov, Boris Tomashevskii and Boris Eikhenbaum.
They liked to make the study and analysis of literature on a scientific
basis and did it systematic. They focused on the language and the formal
features of literary text. Their interest in literary devices was tended to
focus on the functioning of literary features rather than on content. It
concentrates on the study of significance in a literary work and they
consider literariness as an effect of form.

To sum up, it may be stated that Russia is the main place where
formalism emerged and developed. This movement was discarded by
1930 because of the Stalinist and Social Marxist Force and Pressure on

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the people involved. Some of its members and proponents migrated to
Czechoslovakia; there they attempted to develop a very prominent
movement and school in linguistics which is called Prague School.

2.1.1.1 Prague School

Garvin (1964) suggests and shares the view that the Moscow Linguistic
Circle was founded in 1951 and the movement of Russian Formalism
developed during 1915-1930. In the first stage, the proponents of the
circle were busy with problems in the literary language and attempted to
build up a literature science. Because of the political situations in the
Soviet Union, many of the proponents immigrated and worked in
different places in Europe. Prague was the city that became the center of
the Prague School Theory of Linguistics. It indicates the work of several
scholars such as Trubetzkoy, Roman Jakobson and others. The limited
time from the year 1929 to 1939 was known as the important golden
years of the Prague School.

Semiotics of twentieth-century and structuralism appeared simultaneously

from the same origin. The first systematic form of Semiotic Structuralism
emerged from scholars and proponents of the Prague Linguistic Circle
(PLC) who are recently known as Linguists of the Prague School. This
(PLC) was founded by Vilem Mathesius in 1926 who was a director of
the English symposium at University of Charles with his colleagues such
as Bohumil Truka, Roman Jackobson, Bohuslav Havranek and Jan
Mathesius.

Vachek (1964) states that the Prague School generated the functional
style theory which is considered one of the largest contributions to the
Prague School. The scholars of this school unified Saussarian Linguistics
and formalism and introduced the hybrid theory of ‘Structuralism’.

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Roman Jakobson continued the study of the function of aesthetic
communication for artistic expressions and then he emphasized on
procedures of foregrounding during the period of his life in the U.S.A.
and attempted to start work with Chomsky and Halle.

Notions of ‘Neutralization’ and ‘Archiphoneme’ are also the two

contributions of the Prague School. Richard et al.(1992) discuss that
Neutralization is the process which occurs when two distinctive
phonemes in a language are no longer distinguished in contrast. This case
usually takes place in particular positions of a word. For instance, the
sounds /t/ and /d/ in German are neutralized at the final position of a
word. The two words Rad ‘Wheel’ and Rat ‘advice’ are both pronounced
/Ra:t/. Archiphoneme is the way of handling the issue of neutralization.
Nokolia Trubetskoy defines that this term refers to the manner of
transcribing the neutralized sounds with different phonetic symbols. The
capital letter is usually used. For example, the neutralized German words
mentioned above are transcribed as (raD/and (raT). These alternative
ways help in analyzing the issue of ‘neutralization.’

‘Markedness’ is another theory which has been developed by a lot

of scholars in the later year of the Prague School. This theory was
phonologically applied as marked and unmarked positions. For example,
the phoneme /b/ is marked while /p/ is unmarked in voicing. Particular
linguistic elements which are basic, frequent and natural are unmarked
but the others as marked. This idea can be extended to other levels too.
For instance, in English, the verbs ending in –ed are marked and the
others are unmarked. In lexis, for example, the word ‘bitch’ is marked
whereas the word ‘dog’ is unmarked. This happens in all languages of the
world; the unmarked ones include a wide range of occurrence. Thus we

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can say that the contribution of Prague School is significant in some
linguistic fields such as stylistics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics.

2.1.1.2 New Criticism

From 1930 to 1960, New Criticism was the most effective activity in the
American Literary Criticism. Its proponents, practitioners and sponsors
both English and Americans have made it a widespread force in the
twentieth century.The ‘New Criticism’ became renowned after the
publication of the book ‘the New criticism’ (1941) by John Crowe
Ransom. It was applied to the pervasive tendency on the recent American
criticism taking partly from several elements in Principles of Richard to
Literary Criticism (1926) and from T.S. Eliot (1932)’s ‘selected essays’.
Noticeable critics in this way are Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brook, J.
C. Ransom, R.P. Blackmur, William K. Wimsatt and Allen Tate. One
important English critic who shared practices and some critical lessons
with those American new critics is F.R. Leaves. It has been mentioned
that the book of Brooks and Warren called ‘Understanding Fiction’
(1959) is the standard book of the ‘New Criticism’.It contributed highly
to make this New Criticism as a standard method for teaching literature in
American schools and colleges.

The scholars of the New Criticism focused on close reading of the

text and the work of art. Their sensitive and honest criticism was
concerned with the poetry itself and not with the poet. The analysis of a
literary work neglected the sociological or historical aspects of the age in
which the particular text was written. Abrams (2005) discusses the views
of the new critics in their theory as follows:

1. The new critics emphasize that a poem should be taken as Eliot’s

words ‘Primarily poetry, and not another thing’. They do not refer

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 to the author’s biography in their analysis and evaluation of a
literary text. Because of their critical focus on the literary text in
isolation from its effects and circumstances, the new criticism is
often known or classified as a kind of critical formalism.
2. The difference between literary genres is not important in the New
Criticism. The basic element of any literary work, whether
narrative, dramatic or lyric are conceived to be words, symbols and
images rather than thought, character and plot.
3. The New Criticism hypothesizes that literature can be seen to be a
particular type of language whose features are recognized by the
clear opposition to the language of logical discourse and the
language of science. The main concepts of this criticism concern
with the interactions of items, meanings, symbols and figures of
speech. Brooks (1947) discusses that the organic unity is so
important in the sense that the structure and meaning should not be
separated.
4. Close reading or explication is the distinctive procedure of the new
critic: the subtle and detailed analysis of the ambiguities and
complex interrelations of the constituent elements within a text
(multiple meanings). They take their explicative procedures from
some books such as ‘Practical Criticism’ by I . A. Richard (1929)
and ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity’by William Empson (1930).

2.1.1.3 Practical Criticism

Practical criticism can be called descriptive criticism or applied criticism.

It has been defined as an effort that serves to analyze particular passages
of a poem or a prose bringing out what is inferred in the choice and
arrangement of items, images, and accurately describing how a reader

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thinks and feels about them. Abrams (2005:50) emphasizes the main role
of practical criticism as follows: “Practical Criticism concerns itself with
the discussion of particular works and writers; in an applied critique, the
theoretical principles controlling the mode of the analysis, interpretation,
and evaluation are often left implicit, or brought in only as the occasion
demands.”

In general, criticism can be bound into four main types: mimetic,

pragmatic, expressive and objective criticism. Practical Criticism
emerged as a revolution against the subjectivity and impressionism of
literary criticism. The critics and poets who revolved against it attempted
to turn the reader’s attention from the poet to the poem. Then, there
appeared in what is called the term ‘Practical Criticism’. William
Empson, I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot were the eminent figures of this
approach.

2.1.2 Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

The terms ‘Structuralism’ and ‘Post-Structuralism’ are two new concepts

in literary criticism originated in the early twentieth century. In the past
period befor the Structuralism, the literary criticism was quite classical
and was also called as ‘traditional literature theory’. This theory focused
on an author. It became an author-centered theory. Literary texts were
studied with reference to the life, age, and the personality of an author.
However, in the Structuralism, the more focus has been given to the
literary text and the importance of the author has been decreased to a
minimum. The Structuralism is noticed as a text-centered theory.
Jakobson, Saussure, Chomsky, Derrida and Bloomfield are the renowned
scholars who have contributed very much to the growth of Structuralism.

2.1.2.1 Structuralism

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In the second decade of twentieth century (1916) the Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure in his important work ‘Course in General
Linguistics’ that was published posthumously, gave a new approach of
language while some earlier linguists had concentrated on the
characteristics and history of particular languages. The basic credit for
bringing a development in the discipline of linguistics goes to him.
Saussure is the real founder of modern linguistics, or rather the father of
structural linguistics that appeared to be known also as descriptive
linguistics. He concerned with the structures which underlie all
languages. In fact, he coined the two terms ‘Langue’ and ‘parole’. The
former term refers to the full system of language and the latter term refers
to the individual utterance that is derived from it. The Parole or speech is
known as ‘language in performance’, and this is what earlier scholars or
linguists had focused on. But Saussure focused on Langue or the
theoretical system which shapes all languages and the principles or results
which help language to exist and function.

The movement of Structuralism had its origin in the work of Saussure.

According to him, a language is defined as a system of signs, each of
which consist of signifier and signified. Harris (1983) suggests that from
the Saussurean viewpoint the relationship between the signifier and
signified is arbitrary, that is, the link between the signifier (sound image)
and the signified (the concept evoked by the signifier) is a traditional one
(generally accepted but not intrinsic).

Ideas of Saussure influenced cultural and literary criticism in many ways.

They permitted some structural critics to convey their attention away
from the relationship between texts and the meaning or between texts and
the world towards the examination of systematization. They concentrate
on how texts work systematically or logically, what are the strategies

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which introduce meaning, what are the constructions that texts have in
themselves and in common with other works and how they can be made
up of parts in relation to one another and so on. In this aspect, Rice and
Waugh (2001:46) discuss that Langue is more important than Parole.
They state that Structuralism is not essentially interested in the meaning
by itself, but rather in trying to describe and understand the modes and
conventions of significance that make it likely to ‘mean’; i. e. , it attempts
to discover the meaning conditions. So langue-system is more important
than parole-system is more important than an utterance. Peck and Coyle
(1993:46) introduce the same idea to define Structuralism as “an
analytical approach which is less concerned with the unique qualities of
any individual example than with structure that underlies the individual
examples”.

The other basic important idea in Saussure’s work is a clear distinction

between the two terms ‘Diachronic’ and ‘Synchronic’. The Diachronic
refers to the historical development of the language and records the
changes which have occurred in it during successive periods in time. On
the other hand, the ‘Synchronic’ views language as a living body, existing
as a case at one limited time. This case of language refers to a collection
of all the linguistic components which the community of a language
engages in during a particular period. Here, Saussure gives the priority in
linguistics to the synchronic approach because it examines language as a
living and present organism.

In addition, Saussure makes a distinct difference between syntagmatic

and paradigmatic relations. The Syntagmatic relation focuses on the
relations between linguistic elements in a linear order. The Paradigmatic
relation indicates the relation in absentia; the relation between linguistic

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elements that constitute a paradigm of items or words used in a particular
context.

2.1.2.2 Post-Structuralism

In the Structuralism of 1960s, that had dominated the French

intellectual life since the years of 1950s , became to be replaced by
another theory called Post-Structuralism and then Post-Modernism. As
pointed out earlier that Structuralism focuses on structures, rules and
orders but Post-Structuralism discusses that language is subject to
indeterminacy, the generation of multiple meanings and contingency.
According to Cuddon (1998:691) “Post-Structuralism doubts the
adequacy of Structuralism and, as far as literature is concerned, tends to
reveal that signification is, of its nature, unstable.” Peck and Coyle (1993:
194-195) explain the central concept of Post-Structuralism in literary
work by saying that language is an unlimited chain of words that does not
include extra lingual end or origin. To expound this chain Derrida
attempted to introduce the notion of ‘Difference’ in the sense that items
or words can be defined by their differences from other items or words.
The meanings are different infinitly as each word can bring us to another
word in the signifying system. A language can make meaning if a reader
imposes a primary meaning on the words. Readers usually seek for fixed
meanings because they have the idea that there have been a reference to a
word and the word should make meaning in relation to the presence
outside the certain text. Derrida states that a text should be observed as
an endless stream of signifiers with words or items only indicating to
other words or items without any final sense.

The Post-Structuralism’s views put aside some main concepts such as

reason and common sense. They consider them as only ordering

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strategies which a reader imposes on literary texts. The reader wishes to
pull the concerned work into his own reference frame. A writer also tries
to impose ordering mechanisms on his language, but these usually prove
inadequacy. The kind of criticism which emerges from such considering
and thinking is known as Deconstruction that is considered as one of the
basic facets of the theory of Post-Structuralism that is used in the literary
criticism. The concept of Deconstruction highly owes to the theory of
Jacqued Derrida, the French philosopher whose essays “Structure, Sign
and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences’ (1970) that he followed
with his major book ‘Of Grammatology’ (1976), developed a new
critical movement. The Deconstruction, has been the most effective
characteristic of Post-Structuralism because it explains a new kind of
reading practice that is a key use of Post-Structuralism.

One of the Derrida’s most important instances of a deconstructive reading

focuses on the relationship between speech and writing. The phonocentric
linguist Saussure emphasizes that speech as the suitable object of
linguistic study, and that writing as a disguise of speech or secondary
representation. The Deconstruction, as a strategy of literary criticism,
firstly was recognized largely with the works of some critics at University
of Yale. Paul de-Man, J. Hillis Miller and Geoffrey Hartman were the
scholars who responded to view of Derrida in markedly various ways. In
the beginning of Deconstruction, from the year 1966 to the early 1980s,
some Yale critics and scholars exerted the significant influence on the
growth of deconstructive criticism.

2.1.2.3 Reader-Response Theory

Undoubtedly, there were some theories of literary criticism that gave

emphasis on the role of an author and considered him as the central

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element in literary meaning. Other theories attempted to change the
attention to a text only without any mention to the author’s biography,
personality or age . Some theories are known as modern critical theories
which transfer the attention to the reader and emphasize on the reader’s
role to understand literary works. Such theory is termed ‘Reader-
Response Theory’. Indeed, many critics were interested in the way by
which a reader can receive, perceive and understand the literary text.
They assumed that the reader can actively contribute to the meaning of a
text. The German scholar and critic Hand Robert Juss considers responses
of the reader as something essential to explain the meaning of a literary
text. The Reader-Response Theory is highly concerned with the
contribution of the reader to a text. It challenges the text-centered
theories of the Formalism and the new criticism that have attempted to
underestimate or ignore the role of the reader in the meaning analysis.

Fish (1970) examined the idea of ‘affective stylistics’. He focused on the

psychological effects of literary texts on the readers: no text is regarded
as self-contained; the text’s meaning does not appear on the page.
Riffaterre (1978) in ‘Semiotics of Poetry’ suggests what he determines as
the ‘super reader’, who attempts to analyze a text to seek for meanings
below and beyond surface meanings. He emphasizes that the stylistic
analsis of a text can be studied and analyzed objectively. He discusses
that the task and the role of stylistician is to find out what is
ungrammatical, unconventional or abnormal in the way that a text is
composed in.

2.1.2.4 Psychoanalytic Theory

In the Romantic age, literary critics exposed the relation between the
psychology of an author and his text. They considered a literary text as an

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expression of the psychological state of its creator. This viewpoint ceased
till it emerged again in the nineteenth century in the work of Sigmund
Freud. In 1896 Freud delt with the term ‘psychoanalysis’ to distinguish
the ‘talking care’ which is a therapeutic strategy of recovering suppressed
substance from the unconscious. In his psychoanalysis he used the terms
ego, id, super ego and Oedipus complex . Freud sees the dream house as
helpful concepts for literary analysis. Literature and some arts such as
neurotic symptoms and dreams contain fantasized or imagined
achievement of wishes which are either prohibited by the social
principles of propriety and morality or are denied by reality.

Those psychoanalysts who liked Freud had different views and

orientations regarding this theory. Jacques Lacan is one of these critics
who interpreted theory of Freud by modern linguistic theory and
discussed that Freud and his proponents had laid emphasis on the
controlling ego (the thinking or conscious self) as isolated from id (the
suppressed motives of the unconscious).

Obviously, a powerful revival of Freud is considered the prominent event

since the Structuralism and the Post-Structuralism development, although
in different reformulation of the traditional Freudian scheme. Since the
1960s, the psychoanalytic criticism has connected with such other critical
methods as Structuralism, Reader-Response Theory, Feminist Criticism,
and Derridan Commitment.

2.1.2.5 Linguistic Stylistics

Stylistics can sometimes be known as literary stylistics: literary because it

attempts to concentrate on literary texts; linguistic because of taking its
methods, models, theories and insights from linguistics. Halliday
introduces the term ‘Linguistic Stylistics’ as another new term for

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stylistics. He emphasizes that the ‘Linguistic Stylistics’ is a type of
stylistics whose task of interest is not basically literary work, but the
accuracy of a linguistic model that has possible stylistic analysis.

Cureton (1992) argues that literary stylistics focuses on aesthetic and

artistic use of language both in texts which are typically aesthetic like
canonical literature, jokes, oral narratives and in other texts which have
other predominant aims such as conversations. As such, stylistics can
contribute to the study and analysis of literary discourses and as well as
to the study and analysis of verbal texture in other types of discourses. In
fact, stylistics mediates between the two disciplines linguistics and
literary criticism. It attempts to apply the methods, theories, insights and
models of linguistics to traditional issues in literary analysis and the
strategies of literary criticism to the linguistic analysis. That was why
some scholars such as Fowler (1986) preferred to call it ‘linguistic
criticism’ and some others such as Fabb et al. (1987) called it ‘literary
linguistics’.

Stylistics as a style of linguistic study originated between 1910 and 1930

along with the contribution and help of Russian formalists such as Victor
Shklovskij, Roman Jakobson; Romance philologists like Leo Spitzer,
Charles Bally; Czech structuralists such as Jan Mukarovsky and Bohuslav
Harvranek; British semiotists including William Empson, I.A. Richards
and some American new critics such as T.S. Eliot, John Crowe Ranson
and Cleanth Brooks. All these groups of scholars altogether affirmed the
importance of linguistic form to the literary response and the significance
of the aesthetic and artistic use of language in non-literary discourses.
However, they were considerably different in method and subject.
Several of the stylistic studies, that emerged in those periods, are still
unsurpassed such as Empson’s theories of semantics in verse, statistical

15
treatment of word and stress boundaries in verse by Tomashevskij, and
Richard’s tenor analysis of metaphor.

Since 1950s stylistics has been used to critical procedures that attempted
to reinstate the subjectivity and impressionism of standard language with
an objective and scientific analysis of literary work. The stylisticians
exploited the descriptive methods of many new linguistic theories like
Transformational Grammar, Functional Grammar, Case Grammar,
European and American Structuralism, etc. In the period from 1950s to
1970s stylistics became known as an academic system with its own
general overviews, specialized journals, disciplinary histories and
reference guides. Indeed stylisticians in this period introduced extensive
treatment of topics such as ‘Poetic Vocabulary’ by Miles 1964, ‘Visual
Form in Poetry’ by Hollander 1975, ‘Poetic Syntax’ and ‘Meter’ by
Tarlinskaja 1976, and ‘Sound Symbolism’ by Fonagy 1979.

Linguistic Stylistics has the task of classifying the linguistic choices

which are available in texts. Moreover, it also identifies the methods in
which properties of the linguistics call attention to themselves. Those
properties may deviate from the accepted rules in their manner of
expression. The classifications can be applicable to a specific text or
anumber of texts in order to highlight their strange verbal features.
“Modern stylistics is better understood as linguistic stylistics while it is
based on linguistic notions for the purpose of the study of style of literary
writing on linguistic principles” (Kumar, 1998:3).

To sum up, Carter and Simpson ( 1989: 3-20) traced the history of
stylistics in terms of a sequence of dominant orientations and trends,
which, simplified, can be presented as follows:

1960s formalism

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1970s functionalism and generative grammar

1980s broadening contextual orientation: pragmatics and discourse

Leech (2008: 182) discusses that if one were to depict a continuation of

this broadening pattern, it might be:

1990s ?Socio-culturo-political-historical-discoursal-cognitive orientation.

(Adapted from Leech 2008:182)

2.2 Earlier Works on Stylistics

Geoffrey N. Leech in his book (1969) ‘A Linguistic Guide to English

Poetry’ investigates to prove that the study and analysis of English Poetry
is enriched by the methods and insights of modern linguistic analysis and
that critical and linguistic disciplines are not isolated or separate but
complementary. In examining a large number of poems, professor Leech
focuses on various aspects of poetic styles, such as the language of
present and past, creative and aesthetic language, poetic licences, sound,
meter, repetition, ambiguity and context. Leech designs this book as an
introductory course in stylistics for students of English. He emphasizes
that the critical and linguistic aspects of literary works are here
considered as complementary, the second being a tool of the first.
Passages of poetry for further discussions are also suggested at the end of
each chapter. Leech means by ‘Stylistics’ simply is the study of the use of
literary style,or, the study of the linguistic use in literature. He states that
the discussion of the style focuses on the language of a particular writer, a
particular genre and a particular period. Leech attempts to investigate the
general features of language, and particularly the English language, as a
tool of communication and a medium of literary expression.

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Crystal and Davy (1969) in their book titled ‘Investigating English
Style’emphasize that this book is a major textbook on stylistics. They
discuss that stylistics is the discipline which uses the insights of
linguistics in the analysis of language. This book consists of two main
parts. The first part provides a general description of stylistics. Crystal
and Davy discuss both the techniques which are required in the analysis
of any piece of language, and the theoretical concepts on which the
language classification into several types are based. All these types are
discussed fully in the secod part, which includes some chapters on the
language of conversation, religion, unscripted commentary, newspaper
reporting, and legal documents, using a blend of spoken and written
material. In this part, each chapter ends with a series of excercises; the
reader is encouraged to independent study by the ninth chapter,
‘Suggestions for Further Analysis’, that presents additional examples of
each type examined in the second part. The general editor Randolph
Quirk emphasizes that this book ‘Investigating English Style’
complements two further textbooks on stylistics published in the same
series: ‘A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry’ given by Leech (1969), and
‘Style in Fiction’ given by Leech and Short (1981).

Lehtsalu et al. (1973) in their work ‘An Introduction to English Stylistics’

discuss and cover many topics and ideas regarding style and stylistics.
They attempt to distinguish between stylistic devices and expressive
means. Moreover, they introduce a short survey of the development of
stylistic devices. This book consists of two chapters and each chapter
deals with basic topics and concepts referred to stylistics. The first
chapter discusses stylistic devices at the semantic, syntactic and phonetic
levels. This chapter concludes with stylistic function of different layers of
the vocabulary (Evocative Devices) such as archaisms, slang, poetic

18
diction etc. The second chapter focuses on functional styles (formal
styles, colloquial styles and the style of fiction). Formal styles include
some types of style such as the style of scientific literature, official style,
newspaper style, publicistic style, oratorial style, and the style of essays.
The colloquial style deals with syntactic peculiarities of colloquial style
and lexical peculiarities of colloquial style.

H. G. Widdowson (1975) in his work‘Stylistics and the Teaching of

Literature (Applied linguistics and language study)’ presents a
discussion of an approach to the study of Literature and a demonstration
of its possible relevance to the teaching of literature. This book might be
described as an exercise in applied stylistic analysis. This great book
consists of seven chapters, in which the first chapter offers aims and
perspectives regarding stylistics and the teaching of literature. The second
chapter concentrates on the concept of literature as text and the third
chapter discusses the concept of literature as discourse. The remaining
chapters investigate the nature of literary communication, literature as a
subject and discipline, and exercises in literary understanding
respectively. The last chapter is regarded as a conclusion concerns with
stylistic analysis and literary appreciation. The book concludes with many
further readings on stylistics.

Galperin(1977) in his work ‘Stylistics’ discusses many topics and

concepts in the field of stylistics. He divides his work into 6 parts. In the
first part, he makes a general introduction on style and stylistics. He
attempts to distinguish between stylistic devices and expressive means.
Moreover, he introduces general notes and discussions on functional
language styles and varieties of language. In the second part, he discusses
a stylistic classification for the English vocabulary. In the third part, he
explains the role of stylistic devices and phonetic expressive means. In

19
the fourth part, he defines and illustrates the stylistic devices and the
lexical expressive means, emphasizing on the intentional blending of the
stylistic aspects of words and the interaction of different kinds of lexical
meaning. In the fifth part, he discusses the syntactical stylistic devices.
He concludes his work with the last part that deals with functional styles
of the English language.

Geoffrey Leech and Michael Short (1981) in their work ‘Style in Fiction’
discuss how stylistic analysis can be applied to stories and novels. In
writing for all students of English literature and English language, they
provide the practical methods in which the linguistic analysis and the
literary appreciation can be linked together through the study and analysis
of literary style. They draw mainly on the major works of fiction of the
last 150 years, their insightful and practical examination of style through
extracts and texts leads to a deeper grasp of how writers of prose achieve
their stylistic effects through language. Geoffrey Leech and Michael
Short observe that stylistics is the study and analysis of language for the
service of literary expressions. This great book was first published in
1981 and its second edition was published in Great Britain in 2007 as a
linguistic introduction to English fictional prose. In 2005, this work ‘Style
in Fiction’ was awarded the twenty fifth Anniversary prize by ‘The
Poetics and Linguistics Association’ (PALA) as the most influential work
published in the area of stylistics (1980). Additional proof, if a proof was
needed, that book ‘style in fiction’ remains a classic or traditional guide
to its discipline.

Laura Wright and Jonathan Hope (1996) in their work titled ‘Stylistics: A
Practical Coursebook’ present this book as an introduction to the
techniques and methods of stylistic analysis. This work also serves as a
practical introduction to the basic descriptive grammar from phrase,

20
clause to text structure. It is divided into five chapters. The first chapter
deals with the elements of the noun phrase, the second chapter discusses
the elements of the verb phrase, the third chapter discusses the elements
of the clause, the fourth chapter deals with the text structure and the last
chapter discusses vocabulary. Wright and Hope focuses on the
grammatical aspects of language organization and the stylistic features.
They discuss the different effects and functions for the grammatical
structures in a wide series of twentieth-century literary prose extracts.

Mick Short (1996) in his book ‘Exploring the language of Poems, Plays
and Prose’ discusses and considers how the readers interact with literary
texts, how they comprehend and are moved by them. Short also focuses
on how the meanings and the effects are generated in all the three major
genres (Poems, Plays and Prose). Mick short applies stylistic analysis to
a wide range of extracts. In addition, he also applies stylistic analysis to
literary texts from different languages. Mick Short focuses on some
concepts in Stylistics such as foregrounding, deviations, parallelism, etc.
He discovers style variation in texts, sounds, meanings, effects, meter and
rhythm in poetry. He offers and explains a lot of issues in stylistics such
as, drama as the conversational genre, the theory of speech acts,
politeness, turn-taking, presuppositions, assumptions, fictional prose, the
inferring of meaning, speech and thought presentation, point of view, and
prose style. Mick Short carries out many stylistic analyses of poems,
plays and passages of prose in turn. In short, he analyzes many extracts
taken from English literature, using an accessible approach to the study
and analysis of literary works that can even be applied easily to other
works in English and in all other languages.

Richard Bradford (1997) in his book ‘Stylistics’ introduces a definitive

introductory explanation to modern critical concepts on stylistics and

21
literary style. This book contains examples of poems, novels and plays
from Shakespeare to the recent day. This accessible and comprehensive
guide book for students expounds the terminology of literary forms,
discusses the role of stylistic analysis in twentieth-century criticism, and
clarifies with various worked examples how the literary styles have
developed since the sixteenth century. Bradford designs this work into
three parts. Section–I deals with the field of stylistics from traditional or
classical rhetoric to post-structuralism; Part-II discusses the relationships
between literary styles and their historical contexts; Part-III explains the
relationships between gender and style, and between evaluative
judgement and style.

2.3 Current Studies on Stylistics

Peter Verdonk (2002) in his work‘Stylistics (Oxford Introduction to

language study ELT)’discusses the study and analysis of style in a
language and how the styles with their characteristics can be recognized.
Verdonk examines how style is used in non-literary and literary works
and how the familiarity with a style is a case of socialization. He also
explains the relation between discourse and text, the production and
reception of meanings as the dynamic contextual interactions, the
questions of prospective and the different representations of reality, and
how the discipline of stylistics can be a complement to literary criticism.
The last chapter concludes with social readings and ideological
positionings, including some ideas on critical discourse analysis and
feminist stylistics.

Paul Simpson (2004) in his book ‘Stylistics: A resource book for

students’ covers essential topics on language study and key concepts in
stylistics. His book consists of four important sections with a different

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number of units. The first section is an introduction and it defines and
discusses key ideas in stylistics. In fact, the units of this section take you
sequential steps in order through the fundamental terms and concepts,
carefully supplying you with an initial tool for your own study. At the end
of this section, there is a good summary of the entire field. The second
section discusses developments in doing stylistics. It adds and provides to
your knowledge and attempts to build on the key information already
introduced. The units of this section might also attract together some
fields of interest. At the end of this part, we will already have a good and
detailed understanding about the field of stylistics, and will be ready to
conduct your own thinking and exploration. The third section deals with
exploration and investigation of style. It shows examples of language data
and leads you through your own examination of the field. In addition, the
units of this part seem to be more exploratory and open-ended and we
will be encouraged to carry out our ideas and think for ourselves, using
our newly acquired knowledge. The fourth section discusses extensions
and further readings in stylistics. In fact, it offers us the chance to
compare our expertise with important readings in the field. These
readings are taken from the works of important writers and are supplied
with questions and guidance for our further thought.

Geoffrey Leech (2008) in his great work ‘Language in Literature: Style

and Foregrounding’ discusses so clearly and engagingly about stylistic
topics that reading this book is pure pleasure. Geoffrey Leech resolves the
dispute between literary criticism and stylistics in one chapter, clarifies
the difference between aesthetic response and analysis in another and
amongst other things deals with recent developments in corpus stylistics
and applications of pragmatics to literature in others. This book deals
with theoretical debate, detailed analysis of literary texts and

23
commonsense pronouncements on stylistic conundrums. Lesley Jeffries
emphasizes that this book establishes once and for all that stylistics has a
valuable place at the heart of literary studies and in the pantheon of
linguistic approaches to meaning. He states and praises that this book will
be a book to treasure. There is a new two-chapter account of a short story
‘The Mark on the Wall’ given by Virginia Woolf, which nicely combines
more traditional stylistic analysis with the new corpus-stylistic approach,
as well as two chapters on the nature and philosophy of stylistics and its
relation to literary criticism. Mick Short states that the analysis of ‘The
Mark on the Wall’ has that remarkable combination of clarity, sensitivity
and sureness of critical touch that Geoffrey Leech is so well-known for,
and the philosophical discussions are full of his usual acute observation
and balanced good sense (Cited in Leech 2008). In this book, Leech
examines many literary texts stylistically and linguistically.

A list of texts examined are mentioned below one by one in the

following chapters:

Chapter 2-Various short extracts

Chapter 3-Dylan Thomas’ ‘This Bread I Break’

Chapter 4- John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’

Chapter 5- Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’

Chapter 6- Various passages from Victorian poetry

Chapter7- The ‘Celebrated Letter’ from Samuel Johnson to Lord

Chesterfield

Chapter 8- Various short extracts

Chapter 9- George Bernard Shaw’s ‘You Never Can Tell’

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Chapter 10- Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Mark on the Wall’

Chapter 11- ‘The Mark on the Wall’ by Virginia Woolf again

Lesley Jeffries and Dan Mclntyre (2010) in their famous book ‘Stylistics’
discuss many important issues in stylistics. They define stylistics as the
linguistic study and analysis of style in a language to account for how the
texts project the meaning, how the readers construct the meaning and why
the readers respond to the texts in the way which they do. This work is
regarded as an introduction in stylistics which locates it firmly within the
traditions of linguistics. It reflects the historical developments of stylistics
from its sources and origins in Russian formalism and covers key
principles like theory of foregrounding as well as more modern
developments in the cognitive stylistics. Moreover, it includes an
examination and investigation of both non-literary and literary texts, and
essential coverage of methodologies for doing a stylistic analysis. The
book emphasizes producing a stylistic analysis which is objective,
falsifiable and replicable. It reveals that stylistics will be an essential
reading for graduate and undergraduate students new to this attractive
field of language study. This work consists of seven chapters with
different subjects in stylistics. The first chapter discusses the relation of
language with style and general issues in stylistics. The second chapter
deals with the relation of text with style focusing on foregrounding,
linguistic levels and stylistic analysis. The third chapter shows discourse
and context as functions. The fourth chapter offers discourse and context
as interactions in discourse and pragmatics.

The fifth chapter discusses text and cognition as text comprehension,

explaining some stylistic theories in cognitive stylistics such as, schema
theory, figure and ground theory and cognitive metaphor theory. The

25
sixth chapter deals with text and cognition as text processing,
emphasizing on the reading process, text world theory, contextual frame
theory and deictic shift theory. The seventh chapter offers issues and
methods in stylistic analysis and many stylistic studies. The last chapter
concludes and shows future directions towards stylistics. It reveals that
stylistics is regarded as an interdiscipline and concludes with new future
directions in stylistic analysis.

Peter Verdonk (2013) in his work ‘The Stylistics of Poetry: Context,

Cognition, Discourse, History (Advances in Stylistics)’ obviously
demonstrates that the stylistics of poetic discourse is regarded as a
valuable and diverse inter-discipline. In discussing the poetry of Heaney,
Larkin and Auden amongst several others, Verdonk covers everything
from real textual meanings and external contexts in the widest senses to
the readers’ emotive and cognitive responses to poems. This book is a
collection of Verdonk’s most important and influential articles, written
over a period of approximately 30 years. All of them concentrate on the
stylistics of poetry and thereby represent a longitudinal view of the
stylistic treatment of this most prototypical of the literary genres.
Thoughtout this book, stylistics develops so rapidly, as theories are tested
and new methodologies are developed. This book offers such an
opportunity because it is far more than a career retrospective. It is a road
map of a discipline and offers detailed descriptions and evaluations of
now familiar terrain as well as valuable speculations on what awaits us in
new, as yet uncharted territories (Verdonk 2013).

Michael Burke (2014) edits a book titled ‘The Routledge Handbook of

Stylistics’, providing a comprehensive overview and reference points to
key concepts in stylistics. The four parts of the volume include a wide

26
range of different approaches from classical or traditional rhetoric to
cognitive neuroscience, covering substantial issues which include:

 Historical perspectives centering on rhetoric, formalism and

functionalism.
 The components of stylistic analysis such as the linguistic levels of
foregrounding, conversation analysis, relevance theory, metaphor,
speech act theory, narrative, point of view and discourse
representation.
 Current fields of “hot topic” research like cognitive poetics, corpus
stylistics and feminist/critical stylistics.
 New future trends such as the stylistics of neuroscience, hypertext,
creative writing and multimodality.

Michael Burke edits this book from thirty-two chapters in the field of
stylistics contributed by different authors. This book provides an
overview to stylistics, a theoretical background about the history of
stylistics, an analysis of the basic current and critical problems, a section
with suggestions and recommendations for doing practice, and good
discussions about the possible future trends of stylistics.

This book of stylistics is essential and important reading for

undergraduates, postgraduate students and researchers working in the
field of stylistics. The number of contributors in this book is thirty eight
authors; the first author is Mare Alexander and the last one is Sonia
Zyngier.

Peter Stockwell and Sara Whiteley (2014) edit a book titled ‘The
Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics’. This work is a collection of many
articles written by different authors. Stockwell and Whiteley emphasize
that stylistics can be called literary linguistics, poetics, rhetoric, close

27
textual reading and literary philology. They also state that this work is the
definitive account of stylistics, depending on linguistics and other related
areas like psychology, anthropology, sociology, educational pedagogy,
critical theory, literary criticism and computational methods. Each
chapter contains detailed illustrative examples and case-studies of
stylistic practice, with discussions and methods open to investigation,
examination, constructive critical arguments and replication. This book is
an accessible guide to stylistics. It will provide the reader with an obvious
understanding of the principles and ethos of stylistics, as well as with the
confidence and capacity to engage in doing stylistic analysis.

The above studies and works aimed at discovering stylistic devices

through one or other aspect only, whereas the present study has attempted
to study the stylistic features or devices in S. T. Coleridge’s poem ‘The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Poetry is the text with potentials that can
be explored through varied stylistic tools. Different linguistic theories,
methods and approaches in phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics
and other allied branches of linguistics can be applied in studying
stylistics of S. T. Coleridge’s poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.

The assessment of any developing field today can be made through the
journals in that field. The following journals are devoted to Stylistics:

1. Essays in Poetics

 Published by Neo-formalist circle of the university of keele,

England
 Contributors: Roman Jakobson, Mukarovsky, Vladimir Propp.

2. Style

 Published by Department of English,University of Arkansas

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  Contributors: Naom Chomsky, Archibald Hill, Richard Ohmann,
Josephine Miles, Roger Fowler, Frank Kermode

3. Language and Style

 Published by Queens College, City University New York

 Contributors: Many renowned linguists

4. Poetics

 Published by North Holland Publishing Co. Amsterdam

 Contributors :Teun A, Van Dijk

5. Journal of Literary Semantics

 Published by Julius Groos Heidellarg

 Contributors: Trevor Eaton

6. Journal of Pragmatics

 Published by North Holland, Amsterdam

 Contributors: Jacoob L. May, Hartnut Haberland, Jan-old Ostman

7. Stylistics Research Center at the University of Huddersfield

It includes everything about stylistics,e.g. papers, dissertations, etc. The

areas of special experience include: corpus stylistics, cognitive stylistics,
pragmatic stylistics, literary stylistics, linguistic stylistics, pedagogical
stylistics, critical stylistics and historical stylistics. Famous professors in
this center are Prof. Jeffries, Prof. Mick Short and Prof. Dan McIntyre.

Recently, varieties of journals are publishing the wealth of literature such

as the journal of semantics, language and Literature, CIEFL Bulletin and
others. Moreover, a lot of courses in and related to stylistics are offered
by many universities in the United States such as stylistics and

29
linguistics, structuralism, narratology, phenomenology, discourse
analysis, deconstruction, computational stylistics, psychoanalysis of
styles etc. The popular trends in stylistics can further be classified as
affective stylistics (studies the effect of style on the receiver), expressive
stylistics (studies the style of expression of feelings), statistical stylistics
(studies the style by measuring quantity of language units), objective
stylistics (studies style as selection and combination of language units),
contextual stylistics (studies style by observing linguistic surroundings),
deviational stylistics (studies style by observing violation of grammatical
norms) and mimetic stylistics (studies the relationship between style and
the subject it represents).

2.4 Previous Works on Style in Literature

Jaashan (2005) makes a stylistic study of linguistic devices used by the

American literary writer Ernest Hemingway in his major literary works.
Jaashan carried out his study at the different levels of language, namely;
Phonological, Syntactic, Semantic and Discourse levels. Jaashan found
out the stylistic devices which bestow idiosyncrasy on the works of the
concerned writer. He also intended to explore to what extent the stylistic
devices make a literary work sensible by generating cohesion and
coherence. In his works under investigation, Hemingway handles the
stylistic devices in a way which makes his style deviant from the
linguistic rules and different or distinct from other writers’style as well.
The examination of the literary works of Hemingway demonstrates that
all the stylistic devices at the different levels of language that have been
explained in this dissertation play essential roles in the cohesion and
coherence of texts. They are regarded as the significant factors that
contribute in making the literary texts sensible and understandable
(Jaashan 2005).
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Qadha (2007) in his stylistic study of communicative strategies and social
power in E. M. Forster’s novels examines and investigates style shifting
and lexical colouring as features of language of power. Qadha focuses
more on the two disciplines pragmatics and sociolinguistics in his stylistic
study. He takes concepts from these two disciplines and uses pragmatic
models of meaning for the analysis. His stylistic study focuses primarily
on the functional linguistic aspects rather than the structural ones. Qadha
also examines how thematically main interpersonal interactions play
themselves out linguistically through the notions of style-shifting and
lexical colouring. He claimes that style-shifting as a stylistic device is
used by characters of E.M. Forster to negotiate their power in the
conversational exchanges and these characters are able to change their
styles according to the communicative attitudes. His study also examines
lexical colouring used by these characters in their literary dialogues.
Qadha emphasizes that the use of lexical colouring enables the analyst
and the reader predict and assess several sociolinguistic dimensions found
and associated with the characters, like social power, role relations,
linguistic behaviour, etc. Qadha finds out that in the dialogues of Forster
the characters ‘do’ with their language rather than they simply ‘say’and
that the concept of power manifests itself linguistically through style-
shifting and lexical colouring. He applies Scotton’s model of
‘Markedness’ in the analysis of lexical colouring of literary dialogues.
Moreover, he also uses pragmatic theories such as speech act theory and
politeness theory in the study and analysis of style-shifting in the literary
utterances. Throughout his study, Qadha finds out that stylistics in its
scope and function can really go beyond the traditional aesthetic
dimensions.

31
Almehraby (2010) in his thesis titled ‘Stylistics (Linguistics) in the Novels
of William Golding’ attempts to make his stylistic study and analysis of
some selected novels of William Golding from the linguistic viewpoint.
Almehraby makes his attempt to study Golding’s texts via different
levels of language, namely; Phonology, Syntax, Semantics and Discourse
Analysis. Centre of his attention was on exploring the stylistic devices
which present linguistic peculiarity in works of the concerned author.
Almehraby discusses that style of Golding is different and distinct from
other writers and authors because Golding has great exceptional skills in
his writings such as: power of imagination, resourcefulness and his
important experiments in life. All the linguistic and stylistic devices that
are used by Golding in his texts create cohesion and coherence i.e., they
make a literary text sensible. He has used his stylistic devices in a way
that makes his expressions deviant from the linguistic norms and distinct
from the styles of other writers and authors as well. Almehraby finds out
that Golding’s selected novels are full of rhetorical devices or figures of
speech that are understandable to the readers or listeners and so related to
both grammar and meaning. Almehraby emphasizes the relation between
context and form and then detects that the role of stylistic devices in
novels of Golden can be based on the peculiarities of the formations of
utterances. He also discovers that inversion is a stylistic device that has
played a vital role in generating an additional emotion and emphasis in an
utterance. He states that formation of structures and paragraphs in works
of Golding are based on grammatical combinations.

Almehraby finds out that Golding’s writings are characterized by his

imagination power and the portrayal of a character becomes alive and
powerful through his distinct exceptional methods of projections in the

32
form of speech, thought and description of a person. At the end of his
thesis, Almehraby summarizes Golding’s style of writing in some points.

Bilal et al. (2012) analyze the story by Victor Sawdon Pritchett entitled
‘The Voice’ stylistically. Pritchett (1900-1997) is a great English writer,
critic, novelist, essayist and journalist of twentieth century. The purpose
of their study is to analyze the stylistic and linguistic features of this story
at the different linguistic levels Phonological, Graphological, Lexical,
Syntactic and Semantic levels. Bilal et al. identify and describe the
stylistic features of this story. They identify the phonological features
such as onomatopoeia, consonance, assonance, and alliteration;
Graphological features such as punctuation, capitalization, and contracted
forms; Lexical features such as common words, uncommon words,
complex words, etc. There are three types of lexical deviations:
contraction, neologism and functional conversion. The syntactic features
such as the shortest sentence in the whole story is only of one item
(Morgan), whereas the longest sentence in the whole story is composed of
65 words. Semantic features such as similes, personification and
metaphors are identified and discussed. The last features are
morphological features such as affixation, compounding and
hyphenation. Bilal et al. find out that the choice of words and structures
by the writer plays very significant roles in the meaning making and such
kind of analysis makes the massage or intention of the author clear to the
readers. They prove that the most important objective of their analysis is
its application of pedagogy. Subjects such as phonology, lexicology,
grammar and graphology can be more easily and effectively taught in
second language learning classrooms.

Omotese (2012) discusses stylistic strategies in the novel ‘Animal Farm’

by George Orwell. Omotese examines the stylistic features and looks at

33
the features of style as they are used by George Orwell to drive home his
meaningful message. This analysis also focuses on using the different
approaches found relevant by the researcher, especially those which
found favour within the systemic functional linguistic circles. Omotese
also discusses that style as linguistic choice as used by George Orwell in
his work the ‘Animal Farm’ by making all the different characters in the
story behaving and acting like human beings who happen to have the
same features as animals. Omotese emphasizes the importance of context
of situation in the explication of any text and states that this importance is
very paramount because when the context of situation changes, its
meaning changes too. Omotese carries out her stylistic analysis of the text
‘Animal Farm’ on the premise that it is only within the context of
situation of a text that meaningful statement can be made about the text.
Omotese proves that the author Orwell portrays his characters as animals:
major otherwise known as the old major, Snowball, Napoleon, Squealer,
Jessie, Bluebell, Pitcher, Clover, Boxer, Muriel, Mollie, Benjamin, the
Cat and Moses. All these characters play important roles in Animal farm.
Omotese finds out that Orwell employs a descriptive method as a stylistic
device in the presentation of his characters and actually achieves his aim
by the employment of a good choice of words to demonstrate the various
styles in the novel.

Nofal (2013) analyzes stylistically Joseph Conrad’s novel ‘Heart of

Darkness’. Nofal discusses the concept of darkness and demonstrates a
clearly detailed linguistic and stylistic analysis of the text in terms of
lexical choices, setting and grammatical choices which all indicate
obscurity, mystery, murkiness and then darkness.

Throughout the analysis, Nofal examines and discusses some stylistic

devices such as collocation clefting, fronting, short passive, parenthesis,

34
word order, end-weight, front-weight, complex noun phrases and
complex sentences. Nofal applies an approach of Halliday in linguistic
analysis. This approach is one which suggests that explanations and
descriptions of lexico-grammatical patterns and choices should focus not
only on the items and sentences themselves, but as well on aspects
referred to social cultural contexts in which those items and structures
operate. Nofal states that Conrad employs repetitive style. i.e, he repeats a
large number of items with negative affixes and lexical density with
adjectival style. Nofal finds out that the language of the novel “Heart of
Darkness” deviates from the rule of everyday language use, but a lot of
recurrent phrases in this novel are significant due to they employ the
routine phraseology items and the grammar of the language that all
indicate darkness. The novel is more ambiguous and symbolic. Conrad
intentionally leaves out almost people, time and places unknown to
suggest and indicate to the darkness.

Bhatia (2014) analyzes Dickens’ story‘No.I Branch Line: The

Signalman’ stylistically. This interesting story shows the struggling life of
people in London. It seems to be like an episode of a play and begins with
a brief dialogue, ‘Hallona! Below there!’. Bhatia states that this dialogue
is repeated many times in this story and it is very significant in the story
because the signalman listened to this dialogue several times, he was very
mindful to the voice when he carried out his duty and a single wrong in
his work, result any accident. Bhatia discusses that as this work begins
with a dialogue, it shows Dickens’ distinct ways of presenting the story.
Bhatia emphasizes the importance of dialogues and coincidence in the
story. Bhatia states that Dickens used some very short dialogues such as,
talking on telephone, one is asking a question and the other is giving a
response. Bhatia finds out that Dickens used very short structures

35
throughout the story and this bestows a logical link between every
paragraph. Events of the story runs smoothly and its language is so
simple and it compells the reader to finish reading the story only in one
sitting. Bhatia also finds out that Dickens employs his best device
‘coincidence’ that helps to make the story tragic.

Zheng (2014) makes an overall stylistic study of the speech titled‘I have a
Dream’ by king Martin Luther. Based on the approaches and theories
typified by Leech and Short (1981), Zheng examines the linguistic
features of this speech “I have a Dream” Stylistically. The linguistic
analysis is based on the following linguistic levels: lexical, syntactic,
semantic and phonological levels, Zheng discusses some of the lexical
features such as common words, literary words, words in complete form,
words in shortened form and pronouns. Zheng also studies the syntactic
features of the speech such as repetition, parallelism, and periodic
sentence structure. Semantic features that are analysed by Zheng are
euphemism, simile, metaphor, pun, paradox, irony and antithesis. At the
end of the analysis, Zheng examines the phonological features such as
rhythm of sentences and alliteration. Zheng emphasizes that the detailed
stylistic analysis of the king’s speech can supply some implications for
pedagogical applications and be helpful for those who desire to develop
and improve their speaking and writing skills. Zheng finds out that the
king presents his speech a wonderful delivery and his style of speech
addresses his attitude, tone and attention, that can provide many
implications for pedagogical applications and enrich the techniques and
methods in making speeches and English writings.

Albashir and Alfaki (2015) explore the rhetorical devices and literary
style of writing in Leila Aboulela’s novel titled ‘The Translator’. This
novel is a story about a young Sudanese widow living in Scotland and her

36
relationship with Rae Isles, an Islamic scholar. Albashir and Alfaki adopt
in their research method a rhetorical stylistic analysis. Their study focuses
on the rhetorical figures which are employed in the novel, in addition to
the literary functions of these devices. This study concerns with the
constructivism paradigm and the data used appear in qualitative nature.
The specific procedures used in the quotations selection from the novel,
involves the focus on diction, sound item and word combinations.
Albashir and Alfaki find out that Aboulela’s style is characterized by a
sense of integrity that manifests itself in the unity of ideas and writing in
terms of features of discourse like cohesion and coherence. The findings
indicate that the writer’s style reflects the rich vocabulary and an
increasing prose flexibility.

Although the writing form of the novel is organized according to the

formal prose features, it includes sense of rhythm, parallelism and
repetition. Albashir and Alfaki also find out that Aboulela is interested in
the sounds of words, diction of the choice of words, the combinations of
words, rhetorical devices and figures of speech. She is capable of
generating this particular striking writing style to evoke emotional
responses in the readers.

Chukwukaelo (2016) studies stylistically the novel ‘Purple Hibiscus’ by

Adichie. This study includes linguistic stylistic analysis of the novel with
the emphasis on knowing how the author manipulated his language to
create aesthetic expressions and values. The linguistic model of
Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) is applied in the analysis
and study of certain aspects of literary language. Chukwukaelo discovers
and describes rhetorical patterns, code mixing, foregrounding, code
switching, hypotactic, paratactic, and fragmentary structures. Purple
Hibiscus is the linguistic material or the primary source of the data,

37
whereas the random sampling method is used. Chukwukaelo has
highlighted the characteristic features which mark the individuality in
Adichie’s work ‘Purple Hibiscus’. He emphasizes that the style is as an
individual’s stamp or some or all of the linguistic habits of one person or
a pick of language habits, or the occasional linguistic idiosyncrasies that
characterize an individual’s unique and creative expression.Chukwukaelo
detects that the author Adichie manipulated his language to generate
special stylistic effects via hypotaxis (subordination/nesting of clauses),
interrogative patterns, dialogues, etc.

Mugair and Abbas (2016) analyze stylistically the story titled ‘The
Nightingale and the Rose’ by Oscar Wilde. This short story is fairy and
written in an aesthetic method. Throughout this beautiful tale, Oscar
Wilde employs many stylistic devices for the explanation of aesthetic and
artistic ideas. Mugairand Abbas use the linguistic levels
phonology/graphology, lexis, syntax and semantics in their stylistic study.
They examine the stylistic features in these linguistic levels respectively.
They discuss the stylistic devices and display how the relations of these
devices in the figurative language of the text to characterize the main
characters in Wilde’s short story by applying the model of stylistic
analysis, which is described by XuYouzhi (2005) to account for the
linguistic features used in the literary work. Mugair and Abbas find out
the important stylistic devices that grant idiosyncrasies on the writing of
Oscar Wilde.
Jaafar (2017) makes a corpus stylistic analysis of the novel titled ‘The
Silence of the Lambs’ by Thomas Harris. The Silence of the Lambs is an
American novel by Thomas Harris published in 1988. Jaafar follows
Mahlberg and Mclntyre’s (2012) methodology in the corpus stylistic
analysis. This model focuses more on only one literary text written by

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one author. It suggests that studying of one text may be considered as a
small selected sample of data, but then it asserts that this work is still
regarded as part of a corpus. Jaafar examines keywords, key semantic
domains as well as clusters. Corpus stylistics serves to find out certain
features which can never be understood or realized without using
computers’ techniques. Jaafar applies a quantitative and qualitative
methodology to achieve the corpus stylistic analysis on the parts of words
and sentences. Corpus stylistics helps in the analysis of lengthy works
more efficiently. The tool which is used to conduct the examination of the
key semantic domain and keywords is Wmatrix3. Moreover, Jaafar also
uses another tool called AntConc that is a complementary instrument to
investigate and examine n-grams in the text and to clarify their
significance to the comprehensive interpretation. Jaafar finds out that
Corpus Stylistics proves to be of great help in conducting a stylistic
analysis and the chosen methodology works as a perfect guide to
understand elements of the text in a logical and systematic way.

2.5 Current Studies on Style in Poetry

Timucin (2010) makes a stylistic study on exploring the language of two

poems, namely, Siegfried Sasson’s ‘The Rear-Guard’ and Wilfred
Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. Timucin focuses on the relation of
stylistic approach for the study and analysis of poems in teaching English
language as a foreign language context and to this end the two poems are
taken into consideration. Timucin states that stylistic analysis serves the
readers to get terms with the coding process of the meaning embedded in
the texts by concentrating on the linguistic devices, the two poems are
studied and contrasted via a linguistic approach called stylistics.
Timucin does not only focus on analyzing the texts, but also discusses the
importance of linguistic approach in the study of English literature as a
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foreign language context, since stylistics is interested in how a language
works. Timucin also focuses more on illustrating how stylistic devices of
these two poems contribute in the process of the meaning making. He
also examines and discusses the stylistic aspects of both poems such as
sounds, lexis, register, foregrounding through deviation, metaphor, verbs-
Tense and parallelism patterns. Through the stylistic study, Timucin finds
out many recommendations for the EFL contexts and pedagogical
implications. Moreover, Timucin also finds out that the linguistic-
oriented approach can offer many opportunities in the EFL
learning/teaching context for different practical teaching activities which
can be employed for the poems.

Mugair (2012) analyzes and explores the linguistic features employed by

Wordsworth in his nature poem ‘Line Written in Early Spring’. In his
stylistic study, Linguistic methods are adopted in the analysis. The poem
is analyzed in the following linguistic levels: phonology syntax and
semantics. His analysis shows how Wordsworth compares the nature
harmony with the disharmony of human society. All the stylistic devices
which effect the researcher’s attention are deviant or foregrounded.
Mugair also adopts some concepts proposed by Leech (1969) and applies
them on the whole poem in his stylistic study. A detailed analysis of the
stylistic devices at the linguistic levels makes the style of Wordsworth
unique, coherent, and distinct from others’ style. Mugair finds out that the
stylistic devices employed by Wordsworth in the present text help him to
focus on the ambiguous referent and the deep meaning of the structures.
Furthermore, the explanation of the items used shows the meaning and
the literary effect which the poet wishes to put forward. Mugair deduces
that his stylistic analysis will be useful for English students and teachers
to develop the awareness of how language is used to create a special

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meaning, and get confidence in the process of interpretation of any
literary work.

Khedkar (2013) explores and analyzes stylistically the language of

selected sixty poems in English from thirteen countries. One poem each
of the leading poets in English from various countries has been selected
for the analysis. Khedkar selects the poems for analysis from different
countries such as London, America, India, Africa, Australia, Canada, The
West Indies, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Pakistan and
Bangladesh. The selected poems belong to sixty different poets of
thirteen different English speaking countries. Throughout those selected
sixty poems, Khedkar examines and discusses the use of deviations, the
use of parallelism, the use of repetition, the use of shift of register and the
figurative use of language.
Khedkar discovers that stylistics is a collection of different theories and
approaches in linguistics and its allied levels viz. phonology,
morphology, pragmatics, syntax, semantics etc. on the one hand and its
application to the texts on the other hand. Khedkar states that the
academic practices of stylistic analyses of poems hav shown that students
on their own can satiate their academic thirst and raise their own
confidence through artistic and intellectual pleasure. Khedkar exposes the
fact that a stylistic analysis can give the readers aesthetic pleasure like a
linguistic analysis that can produce intellectual pleasure. Khedkar also
states that stylistics is the science of interpretation and its results are
objective, replicable and scientific. His stylistic study reveals the fact that
foregrounding represents a poetic effect obtained through conscious
efforts by the poet and that deviation, repetition, parallelism, figures of
speech and shift of register are major foregrounding devices. Khedkar
emphasizes that the employment of these devices help the poet to invite

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his readers’ attention to certain significant aspects of the poem. His
stylistic study has deduced the fact that parallelism is the showing of
identical structures on different levels of language and that deviation
refers to a purposeful aesthetic deformation of standard language. His
study has also yielded the result that repetition is different from
parallelism. Khedkar recognizes that the employment of register shift is
very useful in confirming the existence of dual perception and proves the
poet’s multi-linguality. Khedkar finds out that this stylistic analysis has
proved the fact that the nonnative poets have stylistic competence of
English like the native poets of English and the figures of speech used in
the poems are shown as kinds of deviated uses of language. Khedkar
concludes that his stylistic analysis has educational implications since the
roles of stylistic devices serve to activate the readers or listeners in the
interaction with the expressions.

Ashok (2014) makes a stylistics analysis of some selected poems of Arun

Kolatkar. Arun Kolatkar (1932-2004) is a bilingual poet writing both in
Marathi and English. However, Kolatkar’s fame as a famous Indian
English Poet rests mainly upon his successful collection of poems entitled
‘Jejuri’. ‘The pattern’, ‘The priest’and ‘The Bus’ are the three poems that
have been analyzed stylistically from the collection. Ashok basically
analyzes these selected poems at five levels of linguistic patterns found in
them, phonological, lexical, syntactic, semantic and graphological. Each
linguistic level is assumed to contribute to the comprehensive meaning of
the poem. Ashok carries out the analysis with an intention of showing
how selected linguistic constituents are bound together to convey a
unique message that each text consists of. Ashok claims that his study
tries to prove how the textual analysis can help the readers interpret texts
independently, adequately and objectively as well. Ashok examines how

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linguistic elements at different levels are woven to deliver the message
the poet wants to deliver and focuses on the kinds of literary effects
achieved through the selection of linguistic items in the texts. Ashok
emphasizes that the analyses are capable of equipping readers with the
understanding of the poems with the help of close analysis of textural
aspects. Ashok states that the best possible linguistic elements are chosen
by the poet to get his message through the observation and scrutiny of the
texts through the medium of linguistic elements equips readers with
almost complete understanding of the literary texts. Ashok finds out that
the three poems under analysis are full of linguistic devices and economy
of syntactic constructions used in the poems shows how their speed
coincides with the speed of the events being taking place.

Batool et al. (2014) make a stylistic analysis of the Poem ‘The Road not
Taken’ by Robert Frost. Their stylistic analysis covers the different
linguistic aspects like graphological, phonological, lexico-syntactic,
grammatical and semantic patterns and choices. Batool et al. state that the
analysis is useful in understanding the main idea of the poem, that is, the
comparison between the selections of right or wrong life. In addition,
they also state that the poem is so simple but the main theme is universal.
Batool et al. have revealed that the poet conveys his message, views and
themes through the different stylistic devices. Batool et al. examine and
discuss multiple stylistic devices in the poem such as assonance,
consonance alliteration, rhyme scheme, rhythm and meter, cacophony,
onomatopoeia, imagery, irony, paradox, ambiguity, personification,
antithesis, metaphor, symbolism, denotations and connotations. Batool et
al. have revealed that this poem is the selection of the suitable road for
the poet’s life and that the poet is standing at the place where the road is
diverged into two. Moreover, the situation becomes so serious when the

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poet or traveller finds it difficult to decide which way to go through.
Batool et al. have found out that by using the different stylistic devices
Robert Frost successfully describes his viewpoint. and that these stylistic
devices offer and convey deeper meanings to the theme of poem. In
addition, they stress that their stylistic analysis serves to dig out the
underlying or hidden meanings. Batool et al. conclude that this poet uses
simple words and phrases in the poem to make it sensible and
understandable and to explain his intensions and by using foregrounded
features such as metaphors, images and symbols the poet makes his poem
more effective and attractive to convey his special messages.

Khan et al.(2014) make a stylistic study of William Blake’s poem titled

‘Night’. William Blake is an English poet, engraver and painter. He is one
of the most renowned founders of the movement of Romanticism in
English literature. Khan et al. analyze the poem ‘Night’ stylistically by
employing and using the linguistic levels such as graphology, syntax,
semantics and phonology. In their analysis, they examine and discuss
stylistic devices used in each concerned linguistic level. Khan et al.
explain that the poem consists of six stanzas with eight lines each
composed in iambic meter and the rhyme scheme of each stanza is
ABABCCDD. Khan et al. examine the phonological devices such as
alliteration, onomatopoeia and structure. In addition, they also examine
and discuss some semantic devices such as simile, metaphor, imagery,
personification and allusion. Khan et al. also investigate lexical features
and state that the poet uses different varieties of lexemes. They discuss
the varieties of items with their grammatical functions (parts of speech)
and their voice such as echoing nature, tenderness and terror. Moreover,
they also stress that the varieties comprise of 30 nouns, 13 adjectives and
28 verbs.

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Naveenraj and Saranya (2014) make a stylistic analysis of William
Wordsworth’s selected poems and its pedagogical implications. Their
attempt has been made to apply the stylistic techniques and methods in
analysing the selected poems of William Wordsworth namely; ‘She Dwelt
Among the Untrodden Ways’ and ‘The Solitary Reaper’. Naveenraj and
Saranya emphasize that the ultimate aim of their stylistic analysis is to
explore the ways in which the use of language has been merged in the
poem and to analyze some of the specific features that grant the poem its
identity. Naveenraj and Saranya discuss that their analysis is done under
the linguistic aspects of phonological, lexical, syntactical and semantic
patterns as they are the major linguistic elements and tools for a deep
infiltration. Naveenraj and Saranya state that their stylistic study is
helpful in discovering and understanding the main concepts as mood,
tone, and the intention of the poet in an objective way. They also
emphasize that the main advantage of stylistic analysis is its methodical
approach towards finding the meaning. Naveenraj and Saranya find out
that the poet uses simple diction and his language is so lucid and
ordinary. Moreover, they also find out that the poet uses economical
stanzas consisting of four lines each with the rhyme scheme (abab) that
gives the poem its simplicity. He employs the typical ballad meter of
iambic meter as unstressed /stressed, in which the first and the third lines
typically have four feet and the second and fourth lines have three feet.
Naveenraj and Saranya conclude that the words used by the poet mostly
consist of one syllable and the choice of words plays so important roles in
meanings making. It enables the reader or listener to understand the
special message the poet is attempting to pass on. Naveenraj and Saranya
witness that stylistics has shown the differences and distinctions between
non-poetic and poetic language as a means of describing literature.

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Nawaz et al.(2014) make a stylistic study of E.E. Cummings’ poem titled
‘I Carry Your Heart With Me (I carry it in)’. Cummings is a fine poet,
artist, novelist and playwright. He is one of the eminent American poets
of the twentieth century whose popularity was constructed by his unique
poetic spirit and composition. He is regarded as one of the American
modern love poets. Despite his typographical peculiarities, Cummings is
the second most widely read American poet in the American society after
Robert Frost. Nawaz et al. examine and discuss the stylistic devices used
in the poem ‘I Carry Your Heart With Me (I carry it in)’. The stylistic
analysis is done at the following linguistic levels: graphological,
syntactic, grammatical, lexical and phonological. Nawaz et al. state that
this poem is full of stylistic devices at each concerned linguistic level.
Nawaz et al. emphasize that Cummings violate and deviate from the
normal rules of language in several places through the whole poem. They
explain that the poem is about a deep love for a beloved which transcends
the soul. Nawaz et al. find out that Cummings has compared the girl’s
beauty with the moon, the sun and the world. Through his style of
rhythm, Cummings explains his uncontrollable passion of love and
devotion for his beloved. Nawaz et al. also find out how Cummings
beautifully describes the ideal and noble love of a lover for his dear
beloved through the sounds, vocabulary, sentences and meanings
expressed and used in the poem.

Aqeel et al. (2015) make a stylistic analysis of the poem given by Robert
Frost titled ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.’The main purpose
of the analysis is to study the stylistic devices and linguistic techniques of
this poem at the different linguistic levels such as phonological, syntactic,
lexical, grapholocial, morphological and semantic levels. Aqeel et al.

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examine and discuss the following stylistic devices: alliteration, rhyme
and its elements, rhythm, hyperbole, metaphor, personification and
symbolism. They emphasize that the rhythm of the poem, the distinctive
rhyme scheme and the efficacy of repetitions of the last line contribute to
make the poem one of those famous poems which combine the popular
appeal with the true artistic merit and these qualities serve the poem to
get a particular place in honoured and treasured lyrics of English.
Through the whole poem, Frost describes the lovely nature scene for
enjoyment, but the final line of the poem “And miles to go before I
sleep”, reminds him that he yet to be travelled before he can take a rest
for the night. Aqeel et al. find out that the poet uses simple language in a
simple way and he chooses simple diction with simple words but his
theme is very much deeper. Aqeel et al. conclude that this analysis will be
helpful for readers of literature, about to identify and understand the
stylistic devices employed by the poets and writers in their own ways to
enhance their ideas and knowledge about literature.

Arooge Javed and Amber Javed (2015) make a stylistic analysis of the
poem ‘Fire and Ice’ by Robert Frost. Robert Frost is one of the prominent
American poets of 20 th Century. He won about four pulitzer prizes during
his period of life and his poetry deals with elements of nature and
personal and social aspects of human beings. Arooge Javed and Amber
Javed analyze the poem at the phonological and semantic levels. The
stylistic analysis examines the stylistic devices and methods used by the
poet Robert Frost in this poem. Arooge Javed and Amber Javed study the
phonological stylistic devices like alliteration, assonance, consonance,
rhyme and rhythm. They also discuss the semantic stylistic devices such
as symbolism, allusion, understatement and antithesis. Arooge Javed and
Amber Javed claim that Frost’s poetry is simple, appealing and thought

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provoking. They also emphasize that his poetry is a combination of the
mind and imagination, the facts and fancy and creates a connection from
personal levels to social and then universal levels. Arooge Javed and
Amber Javed find out that the tone and language of the poem are very
casual and simple, but the underlying or hidden message is very serious.
They conclude that the choice of items plays significant roles in building
the inner ideas of the poem and that this poem is a product of his creative
genius and unique topic.

Li and Shi (2015) make a stylistic study focused on the linguistic

deviations in E.E. Cummings’ poetry. Based on the theories of linguistic
deviation proposed by Geoffrey N. Leech and with reference to Yu
Xueyong’s three-dimensional model and framework, their stylistic
analysis attempts to explore the achievement of foregrounding in the
poetry of E.E. Cummings by means of grapholgical, lexical and semantic
deviations through analyzing eight selected poems, ranging over four of
Cummings’ basic themes, namely life, love, nature and death. Li and Shi
attempt to analyze the stylistic features at the three linguistic levels
Graphological, Lexical, and Semantic levels, respectively, demonstrating
the complementation of linguistics and literature as well as the interaction
between art aesthetics, thus providing an insightful reference to
interpretation, explanation and appreciation of poetry. Li and Shi explore
the unique design of the shape of texts, the technique of decapitalization
and capitalization, and manipulating punctuation, which is the most
important element in the writing system. In lexical level, Li ad Shi find
out the neologism or nonce-formation invented by the poet through
affixation, compounding, and conversion has granted the expressions and
structures with brand-new features, ideas and feelings. From the semantic
point of view, transference of meaning like metaphor and honest

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deceptions such as irony and hyperbole are frequently employed by the
poet and then discussed by the researchers Li and Shi. Li and Shi find out
that Cummings’ poems are full of linguistic deviations. The linguistic
deviations in expressions and structures in all his poems reflect internal
happiness, intense affection, struggle, pain, penetrating satire and sense of
humour.

Shakoor (2015) has stylistically analyzed the poem ‘Kubla Khan’ written
by the famous romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Shakoor has
carried out the stylistic analysis of the poem at the linguistic levels;
graphological, grammatical, syntactical and phonological levels. The
main purpose for conducting this analysis is to find out the poetic style, to
evaluate the text for the autobiographical elements and to analyze the use
of imagery in the poem. Shakoor has also carried out his analysis using
Leech and Short’s model (1981) and his research can be used as a layout
for the study of structure, style, themes, nature and views in Coleridge’s
poetry. Shakoor states that the overall feel of a poetic piece forms the
overall meaning of that writing and that the particular feel of ‘Kubla
Khan’ has been constructed through the distinguished combination of
linguistic units in the poem. Shakoor emphasizes that the uniqueness and
irregularity of poetic language has extensively been practiced in this
poem by Coleridge. Shakoor has revealed that devices of images in the
poem have largely been used for creating a very strange (supernatural)
and in which the poem is set. Shakoor has also discovered that this poem
is so significant even though the poet himself confessed that it was an
incomplete poem of his, it has never seized attracting the attention of
literary readers ever since it was written in the early romantic period till
date. Shakoor concludes his stylistic analysis stating that his research has
evaluated every stylistic aspect present in the poem because of whom it

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has become a marvelous milestone in English literature through the
centuries.

Ali et al. (2016) make a stylistic analysis of Emily Dickenson’s poem

‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers’. Emily Dickenson is one of the greatest
poets in American Literature. In this poem, she discusses the hope as the
special quality of any human soul and compares it with a little bird that
files in the sky. Ali et al. aim in their work to analyze this poem from
stylistics’ orientation by using stylistic techniques and methods. Ali et al.
do their analysis at graphological, phonological, lexical and grammatical
levels. Through the analysis, they are able to identify the style, theme,
structure, the poetess’ attitudes and her personal views. The linguistic
levels pave the way for the analysis of the poem. The whole analysis has
been done by keeping in mind the specific features of these levels. Ali et
al. mention that the main purpose of their stylistic analysis is to highlight
the use of language by Emily Dickenson which adds in the beauty of the
poem. They emphasize that the stylistic devices given in the poem give
the poem its unique identity and will provide an insight in the future
studies regarding this field. The poetess describes the metaphorical image
of hope as bird and that hope is always remained within us even though
we cannot realize it. She expresses that hope remains faithful with us
even in the hardships and it raises our spirits up. However, the poetess
has firm belief in God. Ali et al. find out that this poem is full of
linguistic deviations and meanings, and conclude that the whole
deviations given in the poem reflect the poetess’ personal life
experiences, for example, the dashes show the hurdles which she has
faced in her life.

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Bhosale (2016) makes a stylistic analysis of the poem ‘The Waste Land’
written by T.S.Eliot. Bhosale has basically adopted the systemic
functional approach or the functionalist stylistics as developed by M.A.K.
Halliday along with Formalist stylistics and contextual stylistics. Bhosale
has paid close attention to the title, language, form and the general style
of the poem. Bhosale has used an eclectic framework for the stylistic
analysis of the poem ‘The Waste Land’. Bhosale has stated that this
eclectic framework consists of the paradigm: Formalist stylistics focusing
foregrounding, functional stylistics focusing lexico-grammar, textual
meaning, representational /ideational meaning and interpersonal meaning
and contextual stylistics focusing intertextuality. The approach is
qualitative based on close reading of the text using Halliday’strinocular
vision of bottom-up, top-down and round about orientation in addition to
conventional foregrounding of the formal approach and intertextuality of
literary criticism. The entire poem has been analyzed strophe-wise and
line-wise. Bhosale has analyzed intertextuality, foregrounding,
lexicogrammatical features, interpersonal meaning, representational
meaning, textual meaning and relevance. Bhosale has revealed that the
integrated approach of language and literature suits more in the teaching
of literature for second language learner. Bhosale has discovered that
Eliot’s poetry uses ordinary everyday language and yet marked for rich
poetic qualities. Bhosale has emphasized the importance of stylistics’ use
in the teaching of poetry and theory of literature and that the eclectic
framework needs to move towards blending descriptive, pragmatic, and
cognitive approaches.

Abbas (2017) makes an attempt to explore types of linguistic deviations

and the reasons for the usage of linguistic deviations by the poet P.B.
Shelley in his poem ‘Adonais’. The poem has been analyzed based on the

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theory of linguistic deviations which has been proposed by Leech in
1969. The linguistic deviation theory revolves around eight types of
deviations. Abbas has found out that the poem ‘Adonais’ contains six
types of linguistic deviations out of the eight proposed by Leech. Abbas
has discovered the following six linguistic deviations: lexical,
phonological, grammatical(syntactic and morphological), semantic,
graphological, and historical period deviations. His study has been
accessed through textual analysis in a qualitative mode of inquiry. His
textual analysis has further been specified to content analysis and the data
is analyzed using descriptive method. Abbas provides a detailed analysis
of linguistic deviations supported by his examples that have been
extracted from the poem. Abbas ends up discovering the types of
linguistic deviations and the reasons for their use in the poem ‘Adnoais’
by P.B. Shelly. Abbas reveals that the poets use these linguistic
deviations for certain purposes and reasons which can be abrogating the
regular norms of grammar, enhancing the aesthetic sense of the poems,
showing certain emotions, creating new words, enhancing the rhyming
schemes in the poems and to make readers interpret certain phrases and
sentences beyond the surface meanings.

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