Stylistics and the Spoken Language
Stylistics and the Spoken Language

Summary/Abstract: By stylistics we mean a study of the choice from among a number of possible alternatives of one rather than another way of saying something. Such a choice may be deliberate, or it may be caused by internaIized rules concerning social interaction. There are perhaps no situations of verbal interaction where an utterance can be put in one way only. Stylistics examines the elements affecting the choice made and how these elements are embodied in language. When we are concerned with the stylistics of a literary work we have before us a written text. This does not mean only that there is a body of writing for us to refer to again and again, but that the writer (the sender of the message) could also refer to the text, so that he had the possibility deliberately to revise and adjust the message over a period of time. To be concerned with the spoken language is to be concerned with something that does not have a lasting existence (it was in fact technically not feasible to study spoken language before the advent of the small, portable tape-recorder), something that is made up in the very process of utterance as the result of subtle, on-going interaction between sender and rcceiver. Thus, though some of the concepts that can be used for the analysis of writing can also be used for the analysis of speech, some cannot. The reactions (or expected reactions, or potential reactions or desired reactions) of the receiver are important for the style of a written text also, but not in the direct, momentarily apprehended way that is the case in spoken discourse.

• Details
• Contents