Tools of Stylistics or Levels of Stylistic Analysis

         Analysing the language of any piece of literature is not an easy task. It involves consideration of a very large number of complex factors. Therefore in order to simplify and systematize the process of linguistic or stylistic analysis we can focus on the following tools or levels of linguistic analysis.

Sounds: 

          This is the phonological level of stylistic analysis. Forms of literature like poetry are distinguished from other forms especially because of their musical quality. And the music of the poem is basically a result of the sound combinations or sound patterns like alliteration, rhyme and rhythm. 

Let us have a careful look at the following lines from Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A pleasure dome decree

Where Alph the sacred river ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

          Here the last words of all the four lines alliterate with the preceding words: Kubla Khan, dome decree, river ran, measureless to man, sunless sea.

          In addition to alliteration, we can also note the rhyming of Khan, ran, man in 1, 3, and 4th line and the rhyming of decree and sea in 2 and 5th line.

          In Robert Burns' poem Red Rose also we note the sound patterning in terms of alliteration and rhyme.

O my love is like a red red rose

Newly sprung in June, 

O my love is like a melody 

That is sweetly played in tune.

          Here too the alliteration of red red rose and the rhyming of June and tune in the 2 and 4t line is notable.

          Sometimes the onomatopoetic effects (in which the sound imitates the sense) contribute to the poetic effects and music. 

For example, in Anthem for Doomed Youth written by Wilfred Owen, there are following lines :

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering riffles rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

          Here the last 2 lines imitate the actual sound of a riffle firing. Assonance and consonance also play their own role in the music of poetry.

          Such sound effects are found in different ways in prose literature also. The concept of pause is important in prose because a wrong pause can convey a wrong meaning.

Lexis :

          Lexis is a general term for vocabulary. Ronald Carter says that study of lexis is a starting point in the stylistic analysis of a text. In literature we often find repetition of certain words. 

For example in John Keats' poem Ode on a Grecian Urn the word happy and forever are repeated many times in the third stanza:

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed 

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, 

For ever panting, and forever young;

The repetition is deliberate because the poet wants to highlight eternal quality of happiness in art.

          Sometimes instead of verbatim repetition of words there is a repetition of semantically related words like synonyms or near synonyms as in the following lines from Thomas Hardy's Neutral Tones :

We stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, 

And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;

- They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

        

         Here the words/phrases like winter day, sun was white, chidden of God, starving sod, fallen from ash, gray are all semantically related because they contribute to the somber, sad mood of the poem which is about a break up of relationship and the last meeting of lovers.

          In William Carlos Williams' poem Red Wheelbarrow the contrast between wheelbarrow and chickens is highlighted. The wheelbarrow is a compound word made of two parts just like a machine. It is a mechanical, lifeless object made by man while chicken is whole, living and God-made. Wheelbarrow is singular, while chickens is plural suggesting the variety of world. The two colour adjectives red an white have opposite connotations blood/danger and purity/holiness. So they are almost antonyms in the context of the poem.

so much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens

          In Ode to the West Wind by P. B. Shelley the poet describes the leaves carried away by the stormy wind as "Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red," All these words form a lexical set because they are all color adjectives.

Semantics : 

          Meaning relations between the words, phrases and sentences are also to be taken into account in a stylistic analysis. There are two kinds of meanings denotative and connotative.

          Denotative meaning is the literal, dictionary meaning of a word. But words in literature often suggest meanings beyond the literal meaning. This is connotative meaning which is often more important in the context of literature. For example in Shakespeare's play Othello, his statement "I kissed thee before I killed thee" the two words kissed and killed form a pair of opposites or antonyms because 'kissed' connotes love while 'killed' connotes anger. Thus the two words are semantically related in a significant

          In Robert Browning's poem My Last Duchess the Duke describes the 'lose' behavior of his wife according to his view and says that 

 “.......This grew; I gave commands;/

Then all smiles stopped together..........”

         The sentence goes beyond the literal meaning and suggests clearly that he got his wife murdered on the basis of a mere suspicion. It is because of such skillful and subtle use of language that poetry requires reading between he lines and beyond the lines.

          The language which is semantically deviant on the surface is also used by some poets to suggest special meanings. The best example of this is Wordsworth's poetic statement "The child is father of the man:" from his poem My Heart Leaps Up. This is an absurd and ridiculous statement on the surface but it means that every man is a product of the habits developed in his childhood.

Syntax : 

This is the srutural or grammatical level of stylistic analysis. Messages in literature/poetry are not structured like prose or everyday language. Very often the poets use deviant structures in which the later elements are shifted to initial position as in Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan. This is generally known as the figure of speech of 'inversion'.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A pleasure dome decree

Here the adverb of place "In Xanadu" which is normally used at the end of the sentence is shifted to the beginning.

The line in Wordsworth's Daffodils "Ten thousand saw I at a glance" is a similar example of inverted structure.

          Apart from inversion there could be other violations of grammar rules also. For example Dylan Thomas uses the phrase 'grief ago' in one of his poems. This is unusual because normally the word 'ago' is preceded by a time indicating noun as in - "a week ago', 'a month ago', 'a year ago' etc. Similarly in Thomas Hardy's Neutral Tones while describing the smile on the face of the beloved in the last meeting of lovers after their break up the poet uses the word deadest' It is grammatically wrong or deviant because the word dead does not have a comparative and superlative form. The poet uses this deviant word simply to highlight utter lifelessness of the smile. Hopkins describes the stormy sea as "unfathering, unchilding deeps" in one of his poems. All the three words are grammatically deviant.

          Parallelism which involves repetition of the same structure is also a syntactic device used in poetry. For example in Shakespeare's Othello "I kissed thee before I killed thee" is an example of parallelism because Subject Verb Object structure is repeated here.

Discourse :

          Discourse is a level of linguistic analysis beyond sentence. A discourse consists of multiple sentences and all the sentences are somehow linked with each other. The links could be lexical, grammatical or pragmatic (i.e. contextual). A few examples are given below.

1. At the beginning of Khushwant Singh's story Karma the word 'the mirror' is repeated across different sentences, The name Sir Mohan is also repeated. This repetition links the discourse by providing lexical cohesion :

          Sir Mohan Lal looked at himself in the mirror of a first class waiting room at the railway station. The mirror was obviously made in India. The red oxide at the back had come off at places. Sir Mohan smiled at the mirror with an air of pity and patronage.

You are so very much ... … … … … indifferent,' he murmured

The mirror smiled back at Sir Mohan.

2. Another extract from the same story provides an example of grammatical cohesion by repeating he grammatical category of pronoun to replace a noun or noun phrase. It is also linked by the use of antonyms like 'upper storey' and ' ground floor', ' ordered' and 'obeyed'.


Lachmi chatted away merrily. She was fond of gossip. Her husband never had any time to spare for her. She lived on the upper storey of the house and he on the ground floor. He did not like her poor relatives. So they never came. Не came up to her once in a while at night. He just ordered her about....... and she just obeyed.

3. Sometimes the links are not explicit or visible in the form of a word or grammatical category. It is contextual and mutually understood. Such links are called pragmatic links. For example in Robert Browning's poem My Last Duchess the Duke describes the 'lose' behavior of his wife and says that


".......This grew; I gave commands;/ Then all smiles stopped together..
"

The context of this statement clearly suggests that his wife
was murdered on mere suspicion. And this is understood by the speaker as well as listener in the poem. Pragmatically this is also a warning for his would be wife in the future.