LANGUAGE AND STYLE

This book is about language and style, and about how our concepts of style shape the way we use language, as well as the perceptions of those who listen to or read the language we produce.

The aim of this first chapter is to provide an overview of the theoretical background to stylistics and of the main language theories pertinent to the volume. The chapter is divided into two main parts: the first looks at style and stylistics, showing how they are intrinsically related and how stylistics is a fast developing and growing area of study in linguistics; the second introduces a number of related theoretical concepts. These conceptual approaches to the study of language are often used to analyse texts as if they were not interconnected, thus enabling the scholar to turn a specific lens on a particular text, or group of texts. However, this isolating of only certain aspects of texts, while practical, often conceals the relevance of other approaches and their interconnectedness. Here I suggest that a stylistics-oriented interdisciplinary approach provides a holistic framework for the study of language use and language choice and the way texts are woven; indeed in many ways it forms an excellent interface for bringing together overlapping theoretical approaches.

STYLE

When we talk about something or someone having ‘style’ we usually have in mind an aesthetic dimension, something closely linked to our conceptual ideas of quality and excellence. Thus we can comment positively on a well-dressed person or on the way someone skis by saying for example, ‘What style!’ This is the ‘evaluative’ type of style ‘where […] style is thought of in a critical way: the features that make someone or something stand out from an “undistinguished” background’ (Crystal 1997: 66). Thus we comment on and appreciate what we consider to be ‘good style’, and likewise ‘bad style’ can be the object of our disdain. These opinions are conditioned by a great many factors, especially cultural and aesthetic, and are also intrinsically linked to often highly subjective perceptions and conceptions of identity. Crystal identifies a second usage of the term style, which is ‘descriptive’ and ‘simply describes the set of distinctive characteristics that identify objects, persons, periods, or places’ (1997: 66).