STYLISTICS AND POETRY

KHALID SHAMKHI

Key words: style, stylistics, poetry, foregrounding, model,

analysis.

1. Style

1.1. Definitions

The best way to begin the discussion of stylistics is to define its

subject matter, i.e., style. 'Style is elusive' , 'style is ambiguous', 'style is

confusing'… etc. are very common ideas in introductory works on style,

which indicate the different interpretations of the term by theorists and

practitioners of linguistics, stylistics and, as far as literary style is

concerned, literary criticism. And as a thorough discussion of theories

and approaches so far taken to style requires too much space, this section

highlights only some general remarks about the concept of style. (For

more detailed and illustrative discussions, works cited in this section are

recommended).

Envikst (1973,14-15) suggests a number of principles as a basis for a

taxonomy of definitions. These principles involve: the relations between

the speaker/writer and the text in which case the personality and

environment of the people who have generated style provide the main

clues to it; the relations between the text and the listener/reader, whereby

"the receiver’s reactions to textual stimuli are more readily accessible to

study than are the generative impulses that motivated the sender of the

message." A third group of investigators have tried to take an objective

approach by eliminating references to the communicants at either end of

the communication process. For them, clues to style are sought in the

descriptions of the text, not in appeals to personalities. This necessitates

the use of objective methods to distinguish the stylistically significant

feature of a text from the non-stylistic ones.

Along another dimension, it has been suggested that all linguistic

views of style tend to be based on one of three fundamentally different

notions. First, style can be seen as a departure from a set of patterns

labelled as a norm (Ibid.) According to this notion, stylistic analysis

involves comparisons between features in the text whose style is analyzed

and features in the body of the text defined as a norm and therefore serve

as a relevant background. Secondly, style has been viewed as an addition

of certain stylistic features to a neutral, 'styleless' or 'prestylistic'

expression (style as ornamentation). Accordingly, stylistic analysis

becomes a process of isolating and describing those added stylistic traits

that stand out from the stylistically neutral or unmarked features. Thirdly,

style has been viewed as connotation, in which case each linguistic

feature acquires its stylistic significance from the textual and situational

environment. Stylistic analysis, therefore, becomes a study of the

relations between specific linguistic units and their environment

(Ibid.,15).

Commenting on the papers submitted to the Symposium that took

place in 1969 at the Villa Serbelloni and later published in a book under

the title ‘A Literary Style: A symposium,' Chatman, the editor, (1971, xi)

remarks,

Style is ‘an ambiguous term’. Among other things, it has been used to refer to the idiosyncratic manner of an individual or group; or to a small-scale property of texts; or to a kind of

extra or heightened expressiveness; or to a decorum based on social or cultural context; or to any one of a number of other concepts.

Ullmann (1971,133) mentions that people have different views of

style. Some describe it as a matter of "highly personal mode of vision."

Others regard it as "conscious or unconscious choices" or "deviation from

a contextually related norm." The most neutral of all definitions, for

Ullmann, is the one "which equates style with expressiveness as distinct

from cognitive meaning."

There are definitions which view style in statistical terms .For

instance, Bernard Bloch (cited in Saporta 1960, 87) proposes that “The

style of a discourse is the message carried by the frequency-distributions

and transitional probabilities of its linguistic features, especially as they

differ from those of the same features in the language as a whole.” Thus,

the analysis of style essentially involves "the identification and

calibration of the various dimensions along which messages may differ."

Along the same dimension, Envikst (1964:28) defines the style of a text

as "the aggregate of the contextual probabilities of its linguistic items." He

adds that 'aggregate' implies that style is the result of more than one linguistic

item and that style is built on observations made at various linguistic levels

(Ibid.).

Crystal and Davy (1969, 9) remark that the word ‘style’ has a

‘multiplicity’ of definitions of which they distinguish, in their terms, "four

commonly occurring senses." The first sense of style refers to some or all of

the language habits of one person, as when talking about Shakespeare’s style,

or the style of James Joyce, or when discussing questions of disputed

authorship. The features investigated are only those which are particularly

unusual or original in a person’s expression. In the second sense, style is

some or all of the language habits shared by a group of people at one time, or

over a period of time, as when referring to the style of the Augustan poets,

the style of Old English ‘heroic’ poetry, or styles of public-speaking

(Ibid.,10).Third, style can be used in an evaluative sense, judging the

effectiveness of a mode of expression . A ‘clear’ or ‘refined’ style are phrases

used to make value judgments on the overall effect of the language on

people. In contrast to the two senses mentioned above, this sense is in no

way descriptive and objective (Ibid.).Finally, there is the sense of style

primarily associated with literary language as a characteristic of ‘good’,

‘effective’ or ‘beautiful’ writing. This sense is partially evaluative, partially

descriptive and the focus of the literary critic’s attention alone (Ibid.).

De Beogrande and Dressler (1981, 16) argue "Despite the diversity of

approaches, there is a consensus that style results from the characteristic

selection of options for producing a text or a set of texts." In other words, it

refers to the choices a speaker or writer makes from among the phonological,

grammatical and lexical resources of his language (Hartmann and Stork

1972).

Leech and short (1981) distinguish three views of style: 'dualism' which

assumes a separation between form and meaning and is manifested in

definitions of style as 'dress of thought' and 'manner of expression'; 'monism'

which assumes the inseparability of style and content; and finally 'pluralism'

which sees language as performing a number of different functions, and any

piece of language is likely to be the result of choices made on different

functional levels.

Verdonk (2002, 3) defines style as "distinctive linguistic expression."

More specifically, style, for him, is a matter of a ‘motivated choice’, among

other possibilities.

Wales (2001,371) recognizes the difficulty of defining style, which she

ascribes to its various uses in several broad areas. She, however, lists some

definitions: style as "the perceived distinctive manner of expression in

writing or speaking"; style as "variation in language use, according to

situation, medium and degree of formality"; and "the set or sum of linguistic

features that seem to be characteristic: whether of register, genre or period."

She also mentions the definitions of style in terms of 'choice and deviation'

(Ibid., 372).

1.2 Style, Genre and Function

Todorove (1971,40) defines genre as "a norm consisting of a set of rules

located at different levels." For example, the genre of journalism has its own

rules, a selection or sub-code taken from the language as a whole – one must

be concise, mention the most important points first, avoid the lyric and

personal, etc.(Ibid.). Envikst (1973, 20) states that there is a very close

relationship between style and genre in that genre, regarded as "a culturally

definable stable context category –or stable cluster of contextual features–"

usually correlates to some extent with a certain style, that is, with a certain

type of language." However, as Verdonk (2002, 11) argues, there is not

always a one-to-one correspondence between text type and style. This means

that styles sometimes overlap as it is the case in advertisements.

Envikst (1973,21) also proposes a close connection between genre and

function of language. Consequently, according to him, genre styles such as

the styles of poetry, scientific communication, journalism, and colloquial

conversation become functional styles. As for the function of literary texts,

especially poems, Verdonk (2002,12) remarks "Whatever the function of

poetry may be, it bears no relation to our socially established needs and

conventions," because, he says, unlike non-literary texts, poetry has no

relevance to the ordinary contexts of social life. To put it differently, poetry

does not refer to our world directly but provides a representation of it by

means of its peculiar and unconventional uses of language which motivate

readers to create an imaginary alternative world. For Verdonk, the essential

function of literature may lie in its potential to enable us "to satisfy our needs

as individuals, to escape from our monotonous socialized existence, to feel

reassured about the disorder and confusion in our minds, and to find a

reflection of our conflicting emotions." In this way, the function of literature

is not socializing but individualizing (Ibid.).

1.3 Style, Text and Context

Spencer and Gregory (1964,100) regard text as

An ‘utterance’ which is part of a complex social process, and therefore the personal, social, linguistic , literary , and ideological circumstances in which it was written need to be called upon from time to time when serious examination of a literary text is being made. Recourse to factors such as these may be termed cultural contextualization.

Some of the linguistic factors of this contextualizing process relate to

‘placing’ the language of the text in terms of its diachronic (period), diatopic

(dialect), and diatypic (field, mode and tenor) status, and the necessity for a

linguist to have an historical dimension even if the study is concerned solely

with modern texts because the creative writer lives in a literary and linguistic

tradition and is often significantly conscious of it (Ibid., 101).

According to Verdonk (2002,17), text is "a stretch of language complete

in itself and of some considerable extent, e.g., 'a business letter', 'a leaflet', 'a

news report', 'a recipe', and so on." It is according to their use in particular

contexts, and not their length that texts are recognized as such. Thus, even

single words or single sentences are texts in terms of their communicative

meaning. Typical examples of such small-scale texts are public notices like

‘keep off the grass' ,'Keep left', ‘Danger’, ‘Ramp Ahead’, ‘Slow’, and ‘Exit’.

The meaning of a text depends on its being actively employed in a context of

use. This process of activation of a text by linking it to a context of use is

called discourse. To put it differently, "this contextualization of a text is

actually the reader’s (or hearer’s) reconstruction of the writer’s (or speaker’s)

intended message, that is, his or her communicative act or discourse"

(Ibid.,18).

Spencer and Gregory (1964) argue that when examining style, the analyst

should not only focus on linguistic features in isolation, but also consider

their relation to other aspects of the text and its contextual setting .Otherwise

his final statements will be merely linguistic.

Envikst (1973,51) regards contexts as 'determinants of styles'. He remarks

that styles have been defined as "those variants of language that correlate

with contexts." And for relating variations of language and contexts, he

suggests that this can be done in two ways. One can choose either to define

sets of linguistic forms in terms of the contexts in which they occur ,or to

define contexts according to the linguistic forms that occur in them(Ibid.,53).

Thus, one may study the language of an individual, of a genre such as

scientific communication, of a period such as the eighteenth century, and so

on, and compare this language with that of a relevant norm to pinpoint its

own distinctive characteristics; or one might, for instance, go through a

corpus of contemporary English texts looking for the forms 'thou lovest' and

'he loveth', and define all the passages dominated by these forms as archaic

(Ibid.).

Verdonk (2002,7) maintains that "Conscious or unconscious choices of

expression which create a particular style are always motivated, inspired, or

induced by contextual circumstances in which both writers and readers (or

speakers and listeners ) are in various ways involved."

Deriving a discourse from a text involves two different areas of meaning:

the text’s intrinsic linguistic or formal properties (its sounds, typography,

vocabulary, grammar and so on) and the extrinsic contextual factors which

are believed to affect its linguistic meaning. These two interacting areas of

meaning are the subject matter of two disciplines: semantics which is the

study of formal meanings as they are represented in the language of texts,

that is, independent of writers (speaker) and readers (hearers), and pragmatics

which is concerned with meaning of language in discourse, that is, when it is

used in an appropriate context to achieve particular aims (Ibid.,19).

In principle, the process of discourse inferencing is the same for non-

literary and literary texts, for in either case there should be an interaction

between the semantic meanings of the linguistic items of the text and their

pragmatic meanings in a context of use. But the nature of literary discourse

completely differs from that of non-literary discourse in that it is detached

from the immediacy of social contact (Ibid., 21). Generally speaking,

whereas the non-literary text is related to the context of our everyday social

practice, the literary is not: it is 'self enclosed' (Ibid.).

Literary discourses have meanings which are indefinite, undetermined,

unstable, and indeed often unsettling. This gives rise to multiple meanings

whenever a discourse is inferred from the same literary text. Such meanings

cannot be pinned down and may therefore open up a refreshing perspective in

addition to our socialized certainties (Ibid.,22).

However, literary texts literary texts still bear some relation to the ‘real

world’; otherwise, we would not be able to derive some meaningful discourse

from them (Ibid.).

1.4 Style in Some Linguistic Theories

Envikst (1971,50-52) surveys the place of style in some linguistic

theories, namely the traditional, structural, transformational and functional

grammar. He mentions that traditional grammar incorporated stylistic

considerations. Many rules of old normative school grammars, he remarks,

were stylistic in nature. Such grammars recommended a selection of usage

that was suitable for a definite set of situations and contexts. They were

"handbooks of approved linguistic manners, and thus of style" (Ibid.).

In behavourist structuralism, the study of style was mainly a marginal,

rather than a central, pursuit. The word 'style' itself was absent from

Bloomfield’s language. However, many American structuralists spoke and

wrote about style. Zellig Harris, for example, found the key to style in

distribution (Ibid., 51). Moreover, as Fowler (1981) (cited in Stockwell

2006,4) points out , Bloomfieldian structural linguistics offered "a precise

terminology and framework for detailed analyses of metrical structure in

poetry."

As for European structuralism, Saussure was more interested in everyday

speech than in written language including literature which he regarded as

comparatively unimportant in the study of language as a whole. His pupil,

Charles Bally, the founder of stylistics, again gave little attention (Chapman

1973,4).However, some stylisticians made use of Saussure's dichotomy of

langue and a parole, attributing style to parole rather than langue ( Leech and

Short1981). In addition, a version of European structuralism, formalism,

showed a big concern with applying linguistics to the study of language in

literature .This was clearly stated in a statement by one of its leading figures,

Jakobson (1960,377):

The linguist whose field is any kind of language may and must include poetry in his study …. A linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods are equally flagrant anachronism.

Among the functions of language, Jakobson recognizes the poetic

function which focuses on the message for its own sake. He asserts "Poetic

function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant,

determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as a

subsidiary, accessory constituent" (Ibid.,356).

In transformational linguistics, the basic theory had no explicit treatment

of style. But this does not mean that transformational grammar is of no use to

stylistics. Transformation grammar is a model which may give an account of

the sequence of choices at one's disposal when he wishes to say something. If

style is choice, then transformation grammar is, Envikst (1971, 51) claims,

"the grammatical model that so far most fully maps out the system and range

of this choice." By accounting for features that do not actually appear on the

surface of a text, transformation grammar should be capable of analyzing a

figure such as ellipsis, for example, with increased rigour. And through the

semantic matrices of recent transformation grammar the definition and study

of metaphor, a vexing subject for many linguists, is given a push forward

(Ibid.). Moreover, a writer’s typical application of particular kinds of

transformation (particularly optional transformations) may be said to

constitute his syntactic style (Ibid.).

In British linguistics, there was a big concern with granting style a

place in the linguistic theory, as it might be expected of a school with J.R.

Firth as its stimulus. Terms such as 'register' and 'field', 'mode' and 'tenor' of

discourse gave increasing precision to British discussion. Some British works

–notably Halliday’s papers on transitivity and theme –contain a number of

concrete points very useful to the analyst of styles (Ibid.,52). Hallidayan

functionalism added a socio-cultural dimension that began to explain stylistic

choices in literary texts (Stockwell 2006,4).

1.5 Some Linguistic Approaches to Style

Though linguistic theories did not have the study of style on their agenda,

a large number of stylistic studies have used models derived from, or at least

inspired by those theories. Indeed as Freeman (1970,4) remarks, work in

Linguistics and the increased interest in linguistic approaches to literary

studies in the second half of the twentieth century led to the emergence of

modern linguistic theory as a contributory discipline to literary criticism.

Freeman (Ibid.) divides work in ‘linguistic’ stylistics in the 1960s into

three types: style as deviation from the norm, style as recurrence or

convergence of textual pattern, and style as a particular exploitation of

grammar of possibilities.

In its rejection of 'impressionism' and its adherence to an objectivity and

quantification, the 'style as deviation' school occasionally let methodology

overwhelm its subject. Such a misconception of the nature of literary study

exists in some works in stylistics especially those strongly influenced by a

behaviourist philosophy of science. To refer to a given literary effect as a

'stimulus' with the philosophical commitments inherent in such a term, is to

do violence to the very nature of literature (Ibid.,5). Another difficulty in the

work of 'style as deviation' is its definition of the norm from which an

author’s style is supposed to differ in certain ways (Ibid.).For example Carter

(1997, 125) raises these questions:

What is the norm? Do we not mean norms? Is the norm the standard language, the internally constituted norms created within a single text, the norms of a particular genre, a particular writer’s style, the norms created by a school of writers within a period? And so on. If it is the norms of the standard language, then what level of language is involved? Grammar, phonology, discourse, semantics?

Style as "a particular exploitation of a grammar of possibilities"

incorporates a notion of a grammar that goes beyond the literary text which

implies that certain typical characteristics (that is, selections from these

possibilities) are indicative of, what Richard Ohmann has called, a writer’s

'cognitive orientation' (Freeman 1970,13-14).This approach is based on the

transformational-generative grammatical theory. According to this theory of

grammar, language can be characterized at two levels of representation: deep

(meaning) and surface (sound) syntactic structure. The two levels are

interrelated by an ordered set of transformations.

The notion of style as a recurrence of convergence of textual pattern has

stemmed in large part from Roman Jakobson’s famous dictum: “the poetic

function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into

the axis of combination.”(Ibid.,10). Poetic language, Jakobson argues, "seeks

in its chain or combinatory relationships-its syntactic elements-the same

properties of close coherence that are to be found among the individual

members of a choice relationship, or paradigm"(Ibid.). Examples of such

view of style can be found in the work of M. A. K. Halliday and Geoffrey

Leech on cohesion, which Halliday has characterized as a grouping of

descriptive categories organized around the lexical and grammatical means of

unifying a literary text (Ibid.,11). Cohesion which is realized at different

ranks of linguistic structure, is a syntagmatic or chain relationship. It can be

grammatical (such items as anaphoric determiners, pronouns, demonstratives,

and certain adverbs[such,so])or lexical (repetition of lexical items or

sequential occurrence of items from the same lexical set)(Ibid.).

2. Stylistics

2.1 Definitions and Scope

Leech (1969, 1) writes, "I mean by 'stylistics' simply the study of literary

style, or, to make matters even more explicit, the study of the use of language

in literature." Short (1996,1) defines stylistics as "an approach to the analysis

of (literary) texts using linguistic description." Verdonk (2002, 3) defines

stylistics as "the analysis of distinctive expression in language and the

description of its purpose and effect." He remarks that the way such analysis

and description should be conducted, and the way their relationship is to be

established are matters of dispute among stylisticians (Ibid.). Another

definition of stylistics is that offered by Simpson (2004, 2) as "a method of

textual interpretation in which primacy of place is assigned to language." As

for the importance of language to stylisticians, Simpson suggests that "the

various forms, patterns and levels that constitute linguistic structure are "an

important index of the function of the text."(Ibid.). The text’s functional

significance as discourse acts in turn as a gateway to its interpretation. While

linguistic features do not of themselves constitute a text’s ‘meaning’, an

account of linguistic features nonetheless serves to ground a stylistic

interpretation and to help explain why, for the analyst, certain types of

meaning are possible (Ibid.).

Although stylistic analysis was at first a way of applying linguistic

models to literary texts, such models can now be applied to the analysis of

any type of text: to non-literary registers as well as the literary. Consequently,

the concern of stylistics has extended from an initial preoccupation with

'literary' texts to include any kind, written or spoken (McRae and Clark

2004,327).

2.2 The Purpose of Stylistics

Leech & Short (1981,11) state that stylistics, simply defined as the

(linguistic) study of style, is rarely undertaken for its own sake, simply as an

exercise in describing what use is made of language but rather to explain

something, and in general, literary stylistics has, implicitly or explicitly, the

goal of explaining the relation between language and artistic function. They

elaborate by saying

Motivating questions are not so much what as why and how. From the linguist’s angle, it is ‘Why does the author here choose this form of expression?’ From the literary critic’s viewpoint, it is ‘How is such-and-such an aesthetic effect achieved through language?(Ibid.).

Thus, for them , the aim of literary stylistics is to relate the critic’s concern of

aesthetic appreciation with the linguist’s concern of linguistic description

using term ‘appreciation’ to comprehend both critical evaluation and

interpretation , although, they comment it is with interpretation that stylistics

is more directly concerned (Ibid.,11-12).

Hasan (1971,299) argues that the usefulness of the study of literary

language for stylistic purposes does not rest on how many 'facts' about the

language are accumulated; it rests on how many of these facts are shown to

be significant to the text as an instance of literature. Similarly, Wales (2001,

331) argues the goal of most stylistics "is not simply to describe the formal

features of texts for their own sake, but in order to show their functional

significance for the interpretation of text; or in order to relate literary effects

to linguistic “causes” where these are felt to be relevant."

For Simpson (2004,3) "Doing stylistics enriches our ways of thinking

about language" because it investigates language, and, more specifically,

investigates creativity in language use. By the use of language models the

method of analytic inquiry acquires an important reflexive capacity in that

it can shed light on the very language system it derives from; it tells us

about the ‘rules’ of language because it often explores texts where those

rules are bent, distended or stretched to breaking point. In contemporary

stylistic analysis, a prerequisite to doing stylistics is interest in language

(Ibid.). According to Bradford (1997,xi) stylistics "enables us to identify

and name the distinguishing features of literary texts, and to specify the

generic and structural subdivisions of literature.

Toolan (1990, 42–6) (cited in Stockwell 2006,748) points out stylistics

can be used for a variety of purposes, including the teaching of language and

of literature. It can also be used as a means of demystifying literary

responses, understanding how varied readings are produced from the same

text; and it can be used to assist in seeing features that might not otherwise

have been noticed. It can shed light on the crafted texture of the literary text,

as well as offering a productive form of assistance in completing

interpretations, making them more complex and richer. Stylistics can thus be

used both "as a descriptive tool and as a catalyst for interpretation"(Ibid.).

2.3 The Principles of Stylistics

It is hard to specify a set of procedures, methodologies and theories for

stylistics because of the many strands and subfields which have developed

out of it. However, it is possible to list some principles by which most, if not

all, of stylistics operates.

2.3.1 Stylistics as Text-based

Jeffries and McIntyre (2010,21) stress that stylistics derives its existence

from texts being analyzed, and although some recent developments in

cognitive stylistics posit processes that a reader engages in while she is

reading a text, the task of stylistician remains that of working out what effect

is achieved by particular texts whether the research aims are phrased as a

cognitive, a linguistic or a literary question. Cognitive, corpus or discourse

stylistics of the early twenty-first century, though vary considerably, they

remain text-based in their attempt to explain something about the operation

and effect of particular texts (Ibid., 22).

2.3.2 Objectivity and Empiricism

Jeffries and McIntyre (Ibid.,23) argue that objectivity in stylistic analysis

does not mean making 'impassive' comments on the meaning of a text without

regard to context or ideology. In this regard, Wales (2001, 373) says that

stylistics is "only ‘objective’ in the sense of being methodical, systematic,

empirical, analytical, coherent, accessible, retrievable and consensual."

Jeffries and McIntyre (2010, 23) maintain "The requirement of an empirical

approach to study is that all claims should be based on observation or

experience." In other words, the strictly empirical approach would insist

upon an inductive method of working whereby the patterns observed in large

quantities of data would be the only available outcomes of the study and no

generalizations and predictions beyond these outcomes would be permissible.

In practice, some branches of stylistics are more inductive (e.g., corpus

stylistics) and some more deductive (e.g., critical stylistics) in method

(Ibid.).Within these subfields, many studies will in fact use both approaches

to answering research questions. Thus, many stylistic approaches may

analyze a set of texts or extracts from texts, and describe what is found

empirically whilst also making predictions from this basis about the likely

occurrence of similar features and effects in other data (Ibid.,24).

2.3.3 Stylistics as Eclectic and Open

Generally speaking, stylistics is not a discipline to be constrained to one

practical or theoretical viewpoint or methodology. In fact, the main strength

of the discipline has been to remain open to new theories of language and

literature, and to evolve by incorporating the new insights into its practice

(Ibid.).

2.3.4 Choice, Analysis and Interpretation

This set is more specific to linguistics than those mentioned above.

Choice implies that there are many different ways of saying something. This

element of choice over how to say something was the proper subject of study

for stylistics (Ibid.,26). However, that choice is constrained by non-linguistic

factors. The other principle concerns the relationship between analysis and

interpretation. The choice of what data to study, which tools of analysis to use

and what research questions to answer, is often dictated by the overall desire

to explain something about interpretation. However, any attempt at

interpretation should take context into account if the research is to be

satisfactorily completed.

2.4 Stylistic Approaches: Textual and Contextual

From its earlier formalist and structuralist beginnings, stylistics has

broadened to include three distinct but interrelated strands, any of which can

independently form the primary focus of study, or lend themselves to viable

combination with either or both of their alternatives. These strands are:

1. that which is concerned with the recognizably formal and linguistic

properties of a text existing as an isolated item in the world;

2. that which refers to the points of contact between a text, other texts, and

their readers/listeners;

3. that which positions the text and the consideration of its formal and

psychological elements within a sociocultural context (Mcrae and Clark

2004,332).

Bradford (1997,12) divides these three strands into two basic categories:

texualist and contextualist. The Formalists and New Critics1 are mainly

textualists in that they regard the stylistic features of a particular literary text

as productive of an empirical unity and completeness. They do not perceive

literary style as entirely exclusive to literature—rhythm is an element of all

spoken language, and narrative features in ordinary conversation—but when

these stylistic features are combined so as to dominate the fabric of a text,

that text is regarded as literature. Contextualism involves a far more loose and

disparate collection of methods. Its unifying characteristic is its concentration

on the relation between text and context. Some structuralists argue that the

stylistic features of poetry draw upon the same structural frameworks that

enable us to distinguish between modes of dress or such social rituals as

eating. Some feminists regard literary style as a means of securing attitudes

and hierarchies that, in the broader context, maintain the difference between

male and female roles (Ibid.,13).

Textualists record the ways in which literature borrows features from

nonliterary language but maintain that these borrowings are transformed by

the literary stylistics of the text. Contextualist stylistics is 'a broad church',

and its various factions are united in their emphasis on the ways in which

literary style is formed and influenced by its contexts. These involve (1) the

competence and disposition of the reader; (2) the prevailing sociocultural

forces that dominate all linguistic discourses, including literature; and (3) the

systems of signification through which we process and interpret all

phenomena, linguistic and non-linguistic, literary and non-literary (Ibid.,72).

Modern stylistics is caught between two disciplinary imperatives. On the

one hand, it raises questions regarding the relation between the way that

language is used and its apparent context and objective—language as an

active element of the real world. On the other, it seeks to define the particular

use of linguistic structures to create facsimiles, models or distortions of the

real world—literary language (Ibid.,xii).

2.5 Linguistic and Literary Stylistics

Carter and Simpson (1989,4) state that linguistic stylistics is "the study of

style and language for the sake of a refinement of models for the analysis of

language and thus to contribute to the development of linguistic theory." On

the other hand, what distinguishes work in literary stylistics, they remark, is

"the provision of a basis for fuller understanding, appreciation and

interpretation of avowedly literary and author-centred texts."(Ibid.). The

general tendency will be to use linguistic insights in the service of fuller

interpretation of language effects than is possible without the benefit of

linguistics. In general, analysis will involve multiple levels, unlike the kind of

single-level rigours characterizing much work in linguistic stylistics. Indeed,

it is argued that "style itself results from a simultaneous convergence of

effects at a number of levels of language organization" (Ibid.,6).

Todorove (1971,43) does not accept the distinction. He believes that they

are two complementary aspects of one and the same distinction, and that it is

not necessary to oppose a stylistics of language and one of literature.

According to him, there exists only a theoretical stylistics, which is "an

extension of linguistics and whose categories one can apply to particular texts

in literature, journalism , science or whatever."

2.6 Stylistics, Linguistics and Literary Criticism

The relationship between these three disciplines can be set in different

ways. For instance, stylistics may be regarded as a subdepartment of

linguistics, and given a special subsection dealing with the peculiarities of

literary texts. It may be made a subdepartment of literary study which may on

occasion draw on linguistic methods. Or it may be regarded as an

autonomous discipline which draws freely, and eclectically, on methods both

from linguistics and from literary study (Envikst 1973 ,23) .

Verdonk (2002,55) differentiates between stylistics and literary criticism

by saying whereas "literary criticism directs attention to the large-scale

significance of what is represented in the verbal art, stylistics focuses on how

this significance can be related to specific features of language, to the

linguistic texture of the literary text." He observes that literary critics would

be concerned with locating the effect created by language in the structure of

the whole literary work, with the interplay of character, the relationship

between plot and theme, and so on. Stylistic analysis can provide supporting

evidence for interpretation by indicating how the macro features that the

literary critic is concerned with might be reflected in the micro features of

linguistic texture (Ibid., 56).

On the differences between the stylistic analysis of literature and the

traditional practical criticism, Short (1996, 6) suggests that the difference is,

in part of degree rather than kind. Practical critics, he says, use evidence from

the text, and therefore the language of the text, to support what they say. But

the evidence tends to be much more selective than that which a stylistician

would want to bring to bear. In that sense, stylistics is the logical extension of

practical criticism in that stylisticians try to make their descriptions and

analyses as detailed, as systematic and as thorough as possible. He also

mentions a difference of kind which is the major critics’ interest in new

interpretations and views on literary works and the interest of the stylistic

analysis in established interpretations and new ones alike. Thus, sylisticians

try to discover not just what the text means, but also how it comes to mean

what it does. And in order to investigate the how it is usually best to start with

established, agreed interpretations for a text (Ibid.)

Saporta (1960,83) indicates that the difference is in terminology used. He

says terms like 'value', 'aesthetic purpose' etc., apparently constitute an

essential part of the methods of most literary criticism. Such terms are not

available to linguists whose statements include inferences to phonemes,

stresses, morphemes, syntactical patterns, etc., and their patterned repetition

and co-occurrence. Of particular importance is the extent to which an analysis

of messages based on such features will correlate with that made in terms of

value and purpose (Ibid.). The fact that language can be 'manipulated' to serve

an aesthetic purpose depends on the communicative function of language

which is part of its definition (Ibid.).

As for the difference between linguistics and stylistics, Saporta (1960, 86)

observes that there seems to be an essential difference in the aims and

consequently the results. The result of a linguistic analysis is "grammar which

generates unobserved (as well as observed) sentences." The aim of stylistic

analysis would seem to be a typology which would indicate the features

common to a particular class of messages as well as the features which may

further separate these messages into subclasses.

Widdowson (1975,4 ) sees stylistics as an area of mediation between the

two disciplines: linguistics and literary criticism. By the same token, stylistics

can provide a way of mediating between two subjects: language and

literature.

Disciplines: linguistics literary criticism . . . . . . . Stylistics . . . . . Subjects : (English)language (English)literature

Diagram 2.1 Stylistics in Relation to Linguistics & Literary Criticism (Adopted

from Widdowson 1975,4)

For Widdowson, as the diagram shows, stylistics is neither a discipline

nor a subject but a means of relating disciplines and subjects (Ibid.).The

literary critic,Widdowson argues, "is primarily concerned with messages

and his interest in codes lies in the meanings they convey in particular

instances of use. His aim is interpretation." The linguist, on the other

hand, is primarily concerned with the codes themselves and particular

messages are of interest in so far as they exemplify how the codes are

constructed." His aim is the textual form although he may use

interpretation as an end to his analysis. In other words, the linguist treats

literature as text while the literary critic treats it as messages (Ibid.,5).

Between these two is an approach to literature which attempts to show

how elements of linguistic text combine to create messages, how, in other

words, pieces of literary writing function as a form of communication.

This approach is stylistics and it treats literature as discourse (Ibid.,6). An

interpretation of a literary work as a piece of discourse "involves

correlating the meaning of a linguistic item as an element in the language

code with the meaning it takes on in the context in which it occurs." He

illustrates his argument by examples of analyses which look, though in

opposing ways, at literature as textual data which can or cannot be

approached by standard linguistic description (Ibid.,33). What

Widdowson proposes is a stylistic approach to literature in that it attempts

to characterize literary writing as discourse and so to mediate between the

linguist’s treatment of literature primarily as text and the critic’s

treatment of it primarily as messages.

Wellek (1960,411) asserts "Literary criticism is a discipline that

studies the structures and values of literature and uses gratefully the help

of linguistics and psychology." Linguistic analysis is not the only way to

approach literary style which also needs analysis in terms of the aesthetic

effects toward which it is aiming. Style may include "all devices of

speech that convey the attitude of the speaker (all “expressive language”)

and all devices that aim to achieve rhetorical ends, all devices for

securing emphasis or explicitness, metaphors, rhetorical figures,

syntactical patterns"(Ibid.,417). A literary stylistics will concentrate on

the aesthetic purpose of every linguistic device, the way it serves a

totality, and will beware of the atomism and isolation which is the pitfall

of much stylistic analysis (Ibid.,418).

2.7 Statistics in Stylistics

Enkvist (1973, 27) argues that the impression we have of the style of

a text is caused by "significant difference in the densities of linguistics

features in this text, and in a norm consisting of another, contextually

related text, or body of texts." He classifies the attempts to apply statistics

to the study of style into two categories: those which tried to find those

statistical patterns that are common to large samples of text, and perhaps

even to all texts in all languages; and those which concentrated on

extracting that made one text different from other texts. The first category

was concerned with statistical universal while the second with statistical

differential.

Halliday (1971, 343) states that in the context of stylistic

investigations, the term 'statistical' "may refer to anything from a highly

detailed measurement of the reactions of subjects to sets of linguistic

variables, to the parenthetical insertion of figures of occurrences designed

to explain why a particular feature is being singled out for

discussion."What is common to all of these is the assumption that

numerical data on language may be stylistically significant; there has

nearly always been some counting of linguistic elements in the text,

whether of phonological units or words or grammatical patterns, and the

figures obtained are potentially an indication of prominence. Halliday

(Ibid.) comments that the notion that prominence may be defined

statistically is still not always accepted. He observes that there seem to be

two main counterarguments. The first is essentially that, since style is a

manifestation of the individual, it cannot be reduced to counting .This is

true, he says, but it misses the point. If there is such a thing as a

recognizable style, whether of work, an author, or an entire period or

literary tradition, its distinctive quality can in the last analysis be stated in

terms of relative frequencies (Ibid.,343). The second objection is that

numbers of occurrences must be irrelevant to style because we are not

aware of frequency in language and therefore cannot respond to it.

Halliday argues that this is almost certainly not true. He claims "We are

probably rather sensitive to the relative frequency of different

grammatical and lexical patterns, which is an aspect of 'meaning

potential'; and our expectancies, as readers, are in part based on our

awareness of the probabilities inherent in the language." This is what

enables us to grasp the new probabilities of the text as a local norm. In

addition, he remarks "Our ability to perceive a statistical departure and

restructure it as a norm is itself evidence of the essentially probabilistic

nature of the language system"(Ibid.).The concern here is not with

psychological problems of the response to literature but with the

linguistic options selected by the writer and their relation to the total

meaning of the work. If in the selections he has made, Halliday

maintains, there is an unexpected pattern of frequency distributions, and

this turns out to be motivated, it seems pointless to argue that such a

phenomenon could not be possibly significant (Ibid.,344).

3. The Language of Poetry

One way of defining poetry is to say that "it uses language to

condense experience into an intensely concentrated package, with each

sound, each word, each image, and each line carrying great weight"

(Kirszner and Mandell 2001, 668).

Widdowson (1992, 9) states that poetry is the expression of "all

manner of imaginative insight, of subtle thought and profound feeling,

but it has no subject matter of its own." What is remarkable about poetry

is the way it makes significant the insignificant, trivial and commonplace.

The content of the poems is generally speaking, unimpressive.

Propositions like 'time passes', 'being in love is a wonderful feeling',

'nature is beautiful' and 'life is lonely' are very common in poetry. By

themselves they are of little significance. The essentials of poetry lie in

the way language is used to elaborate on such simple propositions so that

they are reformulated in unfamiliar terms which somehow capture the

underlying mystery of the commonplace (Ibid.).

Terms like ' literary language ' and 'poetic language ' are loosely used

to refer to the use of language in literature in general and poetry in

particular. In this regard, Simpson (1997,7) rules out the existence of a

'literary language', i.e., there are no items of modern English vocabulary

or grammar that are inherently and exclusively literary. He argues,

Literary discourse rather than manifesting a uniform language variety derives its effectiveness from its exploitation of the entire linguistic repertoire. Literary communication thrives not on the presence of a clearly defined linguistic code but on the very absence of such a code.

(Ibid.,8)

He explains that poets' devices such as parallelism, wordplay, punning

and rhyming cited as peculiar to literature can be found outside literature.

Advertising discourse, for example, depends for much of its impact on

memorable or startling figures of speech -the sort of figures of speech that

are often thought the exclusive domain of poetry (Ibid.,9).

A useful tool with which to make comparisons between literary texts

and other genres of language is the concept of register. This is a valuable

term which links variation in language to variation in situation. A register

is defined according to the use to which language is being put. In other

words, a register shows what a speaker or writer is doing with language at

a given moment. In more formal terms, a register is "a fixed pattern of

vocabulary and grammar which regularly co-occurs with and is

conventionally associated with a specific context" (Ibid.,10). Registers

are often easily recognized. Although it is an axiom in language study

that certain communicative contexts regularly predict certain registers, a

notable exception is literary communication. Literature is simply not a

register of language; this is an enabling feature of literary discourse

because it shakes itself free of the strictures imposed by register. Literary

discourse moreover, has the capacity to assimilate and absorb registers

producing complex and multilayered patterns of communication

(Ibid.,13). This feature of assimilating other registers and varieties is

called re-registration (Carter1997,129).

The notion of re-registration means "that no single word or stylistic

feature or register will be barred from admission to a literary

context"(Ibid.). Registers such as legal language or the language of

instructions are recognized by the neat fit between language form and

specific function; but any language at all can be deployed to literary

effect by the process of re-registration. For example, Auden makes use of

bureaucratic registers in his poem ‘The Unknown Citizen’; wide use of

journalistic and historical discourse styles is made in such novels as

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) and Shame (1983) and in

numerous novels by Norman Mailer. Re-registration recognizes that the

full, unrestricted resources of the language are open to exploitation for

literary ends (Ibid.,129).

In what follows an account is given of what scholars have claimed to

be linguistic peculiarities of the language used in poetry. Mukarovsky

(1970,41) sheds some light on the distinctiveness of ‘poetic’ language by

comparing it to the standard language. First, concerning the relationship

between the two, he doesn’t consider ‘poetic’ language a brand of the

standard because, he argues, “poetic language has at its disposal, from the

standpoint of lexicon, syntax, etc., all the forms of the given

language”(Ibid.). However, he remarks that they are closely connected in

that "for poetry the standard language is the background against which is

reflected the aesthetically intentional distortion of the linguistic

components of the work…the intentional violation of the norm of the

standard." Second, as for the function of the two forms of language, he

suggests that the function of poetic language consists in the maximum of

foregrounding of the utterance. He asserts,

Foregrounding is the opposite of automatization, that is the deautomatization of an act; the more an act is automatized, the less it is consciously executed; the more it is foregrounded ,the more completely conscious it becomes… automatization schematizes an event; foregrounding means the violation of the scheme. (Ibid.,43).

Standard language does contain examples of foregrounding as in

journalistic style or essays. However, in such contexts, it is always

subordinate to communication: its purpose is to attract the reader's

(listener’s) attention more closely to the subject matter expressed by the

foregrounded means of expression (Ibid.). In poetic language,

foregrounding achieves maximum intensity to the extent of pushing

communication into the background as the objective of expression and of

being used for its own sake; it is not used in the services of

communication, but in order to place in the foreground the act of

expression, the act of speech itself (Ibid.).

Halliday (1971,339) defines foregrounding as "prominence that is

motivated." Patterns of prominence figure out in texts through regularities

in the sounds or words or structures that stand out in some way.

Motivation is ascribed to prominence if the latter contributes to the

writer’s total meaning. It does so by virtue and through the medium of its

own value in the language-through the linguistic function from which its

meaning is derived. Where the function is relevant to our interpretation of

the work, the prominence will appear as motivated. Halliday mentions

two types of prominence: negative, that is, a departure from a norm and

positive which is the attainment or the establishment of a norm

(Ibid.,340). As for departure from a norm he says it covers both

deviations as well as 'deflections' by which he means departures from

some expected pattern of frequency.

For Simpson (2004, 50), foregrounding refers to "a form of textual

patterning which is motivated specifically for literary-aesthetic purposes."

It can appear at any level of language and it involves a stylistic distortion

of some sort, either through an aspect of the text which deviates from a

linguistic norm or, alternatively, where an aspect of the text is brought to

the fore through repetition or parallelism. That means that foregrounding

comes in two main guises: foregrounding as 'deviation from a norm' and

foregrounding as 'more of the same '.

Leech (1969,73) indicates, "Obtrusive irregularity (poetic

deviation) and obtrusive regularity (parallelism) account for most of what

is characteristic of poetic language." Short (1996,68) points out that

deviation and parallelism are based on linguistic choice. In deviation, the

authors choose a structure which violate some norm-system, which very

often, is the system of rules provided by their language. In parallelism,

they do not deviate from the linguistic norm-system, instead they use the

same structure more than once in a short space. In both cases, the choices

made produce the effect of foregrounding.

Third, Mukarovsky (1970, 47) suggests aesthetic values as another

way in which poetic and standard languages differ. In the arts, aesthetic

valuation necessarily stands highest in the hierarchy of the values

contained in the work, whereas outside of art, its position vacillates and is

usually subordinate.

Verdonk (2002, 11) mentions the following as characteristics of the

language of poetry:

…its meaning is often ambiguous and elusive; it may flout the conventional rules of grammar; it has a peculiar sound structure; it is spatially arranged in metrical lines and stanzas; it often reveals foregrounded patterns in its sounds, vocabulary grammar, or syntax, and last but not least, it frequently contains indirect references to other texts.

As for the distinction between the language of poetry and that of

prose, Stankiewicz (1960, 75) asserts that poetic language differs from

prose primarily through the rules of organization of the message, which

“acquires autonomous value” and which must be distinguished from the

individual and nonreplicable speech act. In addition he (Ibid.,77) states

that the highest form of poetic organization, verse, differs from prose in

its rhythmic pattern. Rhythm implies recurrence of certain elements

within regularly distribute-time intervals. The rules of distribution of

these elements along the syntagmatic axis, which are obligatory for a

given language or for a given period, constitute a system (or systems) of

versification. The linguistic code determines both the selection and

distribution of these signals.

4. Stylistic Analysis

Generally, in looking at style in a text, what is of interest to the

analyst is not choices in isolation, but rather a pattern of choices:

something that characterizes the text as a whole (Leech & Short 1981 ,34)

For instance, the choice between active and passive sentences, saying

‘Persuasion was written by Jane Austen’ in preference to ‘Jane Austen

wrote Persuasion’ could scarcely be called a style. On the other hand, if a

text shows a pattern of unusual preference for passives over actives, this

preference is considered a feature of style. This does not mean that

stylistics is uninterested in local features of a text, but rather that local or

specific features have to be seen in relation to other features, against the

background of the pervasive tendency of preferences in the text. The

recognition of cohesion and consistency in preference is important:

without it, one would scarcely acknowledge a style. To go one stage

further, ‘consistency’ and ‘tendency’ are most naturally reduced to

‘frequency’, and so, it appears, the stylistician becomes a statistician

(Ibid.).

The linguist C. H. Hockett (cited in Fowler 1966) argues that "poem

is a long idiom: an utterance with a total meaning which is not merely the

sum of the meanings of its separate components." So an account of a

poem cannot be merely an inventory of its parts but must involve also a

statement of the network of relations between the parts (Ibid.,20-21).The

linguist must make a whole analysis of the literary text, and must then

proceed to utilize his analyzed and understood fragments as elements in a

synthesis. Relations within each level must be explored. For example, the

linguist must relate his isolated grammatical statements to one another

and must be prepared to describe points of contact between levels of

form: to connect lexical with grammatical, grammatical with

phonological, details (Ibid.).

Widdowson (1992, 5) suggests that "a general feature of poetry is

that it cannot be interpreted by a direct application of conventional logic."

This is because it normally represents an experience which is out of the

ordinary, and to express such experience, ordinary language and logic

need to take a different shape. Conventional patterns of thought and

expression should be disrupted and reformulated into patterns which

follow different principles of order:

1. Day by day we all miss her . Words would fail our loss to tell. But in heaven we hope to meet her, Evermore with her to dwell.

Widdowson(Ibid.)

Carter and Simpson(1989,3) warn against "too narrow a focus on

linguistic forms" which, they claim, does not reveal what is significant in

the study of literary texts: "the effects which arise when linguistic forms

implicate aspects of context or when they signal, directly or indirectly,

the many functions they can be made to perform." This in no way

indicates that grammatical or phonological forms of literary texts are not

of interest. It suggests that they involve micro-structural aspects of text.

5. Some Models of Stylistic Analysis of Poetry

The interest in the study of literary language in general and poetic

language in particular has taken different forms ranging from analyses

concerned with illustrating how language is patterned in literary texts,

through analyses showing how such language patterning contributes to

the meaning of the text, to those which are wholly dedicated to relate

interpretation to stylistic analysis and call for going beyond the text itself

to include all aspects thought to be relevant which are normally subsumed

under the heading of context. Below is a brief look at representatives of

the approaches just mentioned.

5.1Halliday’s Model

In his 'Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies', Halliday

analyzes Yeats' ‘Leda and the Swan’ to see how it exemplifies the

system of language. In his view, the description of the linguistic elements

that occur in a piece of writing, the account of how it exemplifies the

system of the language, is part of the analysis of the piece of writing as a

literary work. He describes how two parts of the system of English are

exemplified in Yeats' poem: the first being the nominal group and the

second the verbal group. He is mostly concerned with the functions the

definite article has within the nominal group. He notices a discrepancy

between the forms of the nominal groups he has identified and the

functions they appear to have in the poem. Thus, he concludes that this

part of the system, i.e., 'the nominal groups' is being used in a somewhat

an unusual way without trying to pinpoint the literary effect behind that.

In other words, while the analysis provides an accurate specification of

how linguistic elements are exemplified, it does not lead to interpretation.

It may be regarded as part of literary criticism only if the significance of

its findings are investigated and hypotheses are made as to what they

contribute to an understanding of the literary work as a discourse

(Widdowson1975,7-14).For the detailed analysis see (Freeman,1970,57-

71).

5.2Thorn’s model

In his article Stylistics and Generative Grammars Thorn (1970,

185) argues against applying the grammar of ordinary language in the

analysis of poetry. For him, this will result either in a grammar generating

a vast number of 'unwanted sentences' or a grammar containing

statements 'so complex that they become virtually meaningless'. He,

therefore, suggests an alternative approach:

Given a text containing sequences which resist inclusion in a grammar of English it might prove more illuminating to regard it as a sample of a different language or dialect from standard English.The syntactical preoccupation of stylistics are to be satisfied, not by adjusting a grammar of standard English so as to enable it to generate all the actual sentences of the poem ,but by finding the grammar which most adequately describes the structure of this other language. (Ibid.186).

He illustrates his model by considering the deviations from the norms of

the standard language which usually occur in poetry namely those found

in E.E. Cummings' poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town" For more

about the model see (Freeman 1970,182-195).

5.3Sinclair’s Model

Under the title 'Taking a Poem to Pieces', Sinclair carries out a

linguistic analysis of one of Larkin’s poem, 'First Sight'. His hypothesis

is that the grammatical and other patterns are giving meaning in a more

complex and tightly packed way than we expect from our familiarity with

traditional methods of describing language. He focuses on the grammar

of the poem, particularly sentences, clauses and groups (phrases).He

discusses in detail the various structural types of each of these

grammatical units as they are exemplified in the poem and comments on

the meanings they contribute in the poem. This analysis, he says, "shows

how some aspects of the meaning of the poem can be described quite

independently of evaluation." For the whole analysis see Fowler

(1966,68-81).

5.4 Short's Model

In Prelude I to a Literary Linguistic Stylistics which presents an

analysis of a section of one of T.S. Eliot's poems, Short (1982,55)

describes his approach as "that of using linguistic stylistic analysis as a

means of supporting a literary or interpretive thesis." He claims that his

analysis uses linguistic information but makes purely 'literary' points as

well. This analysis begins with giving an overall interpretation of the

poem which is to be backed up by more detailed analysis. Thus, linguistic

detail is used only where it is relevant for the purposes of the literary

argument (Ibid.,56). See Carter (1982,55-62)for the detailed analysis.

5.5 Leech’s Model

In his article 'Language and Interpretation', Leech (1970,120)

asserts,“ Linguistic description and critical interpretation are distinct and

complementary ways of 'explaining' a literary text.” He argues that a

work of literature contains dimensions additional to those operating in

other types of discourse. The apparatus of linguistic description is an

insensitive tool for literary analysis unless it is adapted to handle these

extra complexities (Ibid.)

He mentions four such dimensions: cohesion, foregrounding,

cohesion of foregrounding and finally context of situation.To begin with,

cohesion is the way in which independent choices in different points of a

text correspond with or presuppose one another forming a network of

sequential relations. Cohesion is achieved either by grammatical devices,

grammatical cohesion, or by lexical devices, lexical cohesion (Ibid.).

Secondly, foregrounding or motivated deviation from linguistic or other

socially accepted norms has been claimed to be a basic principle of

aesthetic communication. It is valuable if not essential for the study of

poetic language (Ibid.,121-122).Thirdly, foregrounded features identified

in isolation should be related to one another and to the text in its entirety

and this Leech calls cohesion of foregrounding. Features related to the

above mentioned dimensions are part of the meaning of the poem: they

are the matters of linguistic choice, and can be described in terms of the

categories of language (Ibid.,123-124).

But in a broader sense, meaning is “whatever is communicated to

this or that reader: it includes the factor of interpretation."If the task of a

linguistic exegesis is to describe the text, that of critical exegesis is from

one point of view, to explore and evaluate possible interpretations of the

text(Ibid.,125). The interpretation of the whole poem is built up from a

consistency in the interpretation of individual features (Ibid., 126). But

there is another aspect of a poem which requires interpretation: its

implication of context which is the fourth dimension. Normal discourse

operates within a describable communicative situation, from which an

important part of its linguistic meaning derives. In literature, it is usually

true to say that such contextual information is largely irrelevant. Instead

we have to construct a context by inference from the text itself, by asking

such questions as 'who are the 'I' and the 'you' of the poem, and in what

circumstances are they communicating? (Ibid.).

6. Lyrical Poetry

Poetry can be classified into narrative and lyric .While narrative

poems stress action lyrics stress songs (DiYanni2000,15).These two types

have many divisions: narrative poetry includes the epic, romance ballad;

lyric poetry includes the 'elegy and epigraph', 'sonnet and sestina', 'aubade

and villanelle'. Moreover, each major type adheres to different

conventions. Narrative poems, for example, tell stories and describe

actions; lyric poems combine speech and song to express feeling in

varying degrees of verbal music (Ibid.). On the contrary to narrative

poetry, in lyric poetry, story is subordinated to song, and action to

emotion. Lyrics are "Subjective poems, often brief, that express the

feeling and thoughts of a single speaker (who may or may not represent

the poet ) " (Ibid.,17).

Lyric poetry is typically characterized by brevity, melody, and

emotional intensity. The music of lyrics makes them memorable, and

their brevity contributes to the intensity of their emotional expression

(Ibid.). Forms of lyric poetry range from the epigram, a brief witty poem

that is often satirical, to the elegy, a lament for the dead. Lyric forms also

include the ode, a long stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter,

and form ; and the aubade, a morning love song (as opposed to

a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers

separating at dawn (Ibid.). The tones , moods , and voices of lyric poems

are as variable and as complexly intertwined as human feeling, thought,

and imagination allow. Generally considered the most compressed poetic

type, the lyric poem typically expresses much in little (Ibid.)