NÅGRA STILDEFINITIONERThe problem of "counting" |
Daher nun ist die erste, ja, schon für sich allein beinahe ausreichende Regel des guten Stils diese, daß man etwas zu sagen habe, o, damit kommt man weit! Schopenhauer
Style is the way in which, in a particular situation, you succeed to give your words an intended effect.
(Fritz Askeberg) Sound, but not operable.
Style as quantity and as deviance from a norm
Unsound but operabel!
The style of a text is a function of the aggregate of the ratios between the freqencies of its phonological, grammatical and lexical items, and the frequencies of the corresponding items in a contextually related norm.
Nils Erik Enkvist "On defining style" 1965
Very difficult to grasp; E. therefore presented this version:The style of a text [thus] is the aggregate of the contextual probabilities of its linguistic items. (Nils Erik Enkvist "On defining style" 1965)
Very similar is
Style in a quantitative definition are statistically significant deviations from a norm. (Jan Thavenius 1966)
THE PROBLEM OF COUNTING
However effective is the emphasis on repetition in poetry, the sound texture is still far from being confined to numerical contrivancies, and a phoneme that appears only once, but in a key word, in a pertinent position, against a contrastive background, may acquire a striking significance. As painters used to say, "un kilo de vert n'est pas plus vert qu'un demi kilo." Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and poetics", Closing statement inStyle in language (ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok) 1960
COMMENTARY: "Beware of your friends"! Of course, more of green is not exactly the same as moore green, or greener but on a painting, the whole kilo would presumably give a more green effect than the half kilo.
No, the mistake to lend on "numerical contrievancies" lies not in the counting in itself but in the theory behind the counting, i.e. what should be counted, i.e. what is stylistically relevant.
Thus if style cannot be reduced to counting, this is because it cannot be reduced to a simple question of prominence. An adequate characterisation of an author's style is much more than an inventory of linguistic highlights. This is why linguists were so often reluctant to take up questions of criticism and evaluation ...:they were very well aware that statements about linguistic prominence by themselves offer no criterion of literary value. Halliday, Linguistic function and literary style: an inquiry into the language of William Golding's The Inheritors (Halliday, M.A.K., Explorations in the functions of language (Arnold) London 1973 p. 117. (M.A.K. Halliday is a well-known anglo-australian linguist. Here it is noteworthy that he couples "style" with "literary value" which is a view not uncommon in several cultures with the classical tradition.)
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORM
The impression we get from the style of a message is produced by a comparison of the frequencies of the lingustic elements in this text with the corresponding elements in a contextually related norm, or in a network of such norms. Nils Erik Enkvist 1973
Note, however, that the choice of norm against which we compare the text will always predetermine the results. In this sense, linguistic stylistics comes ultimately to rely on extralinguistic criteria. Style is an interface, a contact area between language and its situational, culturally conditioned use. (Enkvist 1985)
THE PROBLEM OF RELEVANCE
"to this use of the norm I see an objection which is more fundamental than just mentioned, namely not so much that the linguistic norm is virtually unobtainable, but that it is irrelevant" Michael Riffaterre, "Criteria for style analysis", 1959
The important matters, the matters that will lead to objective proof or disproof, are the matters of deciding what is to be counted, what is the nature of that which is counted, and why it should be counted. Bennison Gray, Style. The problem and its solution 1969
There is, of course, no risk of the statistician's putting the linguist and the literary critic out of business: in practice only the linguist and the critic can tell the statistician what features are worth counting in the first place. Nils Erik Enkvist "On defining style" 1965
This is one of the most beautiful (read: ugly) instances of petitio principi (begging the question) I have ever encountered!!
Style as the result of the writer's choice between synonymous expressions.
Style is detail of meaning or small-scale meaning. [---] Where there is either no difference in meaning at all, or else a gross difference, we do not say there is a difference in style; where the difference in meaning is relatively subtle and is present along with some basic similarity on the primary level, we call the difference in meaning a difference in style.Monroe Beardsley 1958
Goes for words - but for words only! There are no "synonymous" texts!
Style is deviance from normal language.
Bally
Tropes and figures in the elocutio of classical rhetoric: adiecto, detractio etc etc, but nobody mentions classical rhetoric in defining style!!
NB that tropes and figures are important style elements but that it is not possible to consider the sum of tropes etc at the style of the text. That would be like defining a cake after its content of raisins etc.!
It is also impossible to define normal in any operational way even if we very well know!
"deviation is of very limited interest in stylistics" Halliday, Linguistic function and literary style: an inquiry into the language of William Golding's The Inheritors . In Halliday, M.A.K., ed., Explorations in the functions of language 1973
STYLE AS RELATION or FUNCTION OF FORM, SUBSTANS AND EFFECT.
(Cassirer) True, but needs specification(s)
Style is a relation between form, content and effect. Stylistically relevant features are to be found on all levels of language and on the level of content. Relevant means that they contribute to some effect. There is also a rhetorical level consisting of tropes and figures of all kinds. The preriquisite of relevance goes for those also.
"the relation between form and content is not arbitrary or conventional, but [...] form signifies content" Roger Fowler & Gunther Kress, "Critical linguistics" i Fowler et al., Language and control 1970
Stylistics is the study of style particularly in literary texts, and more particularly, in view of explicating the relation between the form of the text and its potential for interpretation. Geoffrey Leech, "Stylistics and funtionalism", in The linguistics of writing. Arguments between language and literature. Ed by Nigel Fabb, Derek Attridge, Alan Durant & Colin MacCabe 1987
the "growing concern in all intellectual pursuits in recent years for integration of the formal and the informal" has led to "a recognition in linguistics / stylistics that analysis of the formal features of a text -- divorced as it were, from the messy business of people -- is insufficient" Birch, David & O'Toole, Michael, eds. (1988), Functions of style, Introduction
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