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Regarding the style embedded in language as viewed from the field of stylistics, it manifests from motivated decision making at particular levels of language, inclusive of its lexicon, semantics, syntax and other characteristics indicated, besides other ‘combinations of stylistic factors’ (Leech & Short 2007: 36) such as phonology, graphology, pragmatics’ frequencies and collocations. Leech and Short (2007) define style as ‘the way in which language is used in a given context, by a given person, for a given purpose, and so on’ (Leech & Short 2007: 9), while Studer (2008) considers ‘the notion of style as a motivated choice of linguistic strategies applied to induce specific effects’ (Studer 2008: 7). According to Stockwell (2006), ‘style can be seen as the characteristic pattern of choices associated with a writer’s or projected character’s “mind-style,” or the pattern associated with particular periods, genres or literary movements’ (Stockwell 2006: 746). Since the comprehension and interpretation of texts is guided by the determination of linguistic categories, then employing corpus

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linguistics as a methodology to identify such features that trigger understanding is a valuable aim to pursue.

Mullany and Stockwell (2010) consider that style has the potential to be broadly defined as those sequences of text than can be identified due to their linguistic and discoursal characteristics. Furthermore, they consider style to encompass a range of parameters inclusive of ‘every sound, word, syntactic structure, co-referential link and overall shape of the text’ in existence (Mullany & Stockwell 2010: 43). The result of such choice exposes shades of meaning with contrasting emphasis, a variety of tone and evaluative influences, contrasting viewpoints and emotional traits, sincerity, perseverance and worth. Essentially, notwithstanding the historical tendency to differentiate between form (linguistic structure) and content (decoded meaning), it is not feasible in practice to separate them (Mullany & Stockwell 2010). Leech and Short (2007) suggest that ‘the goal of [stylistic studies is] explaining the relation between language and artistic function’ (Leech & Short 2007: 11). Thornborrow and Wareing (1998: 2) identify what they refer to as ‘key aspects of stylistics’:

• the use of linguistics (the study of language) to approach literary texts • the discussion of texts according to objective criteria rather than

according purely to subjective and impressionistic values

• emphasis on the aesthetic properties of language (for example, the manner in which rhyme can offer pleasure)

(Thornborrow & Wareing 1998: 2; bold in original)

According to Semino (2011), stylistics ‘[i]n its broadest sense … is concerned with the description and interpretation of distinctive linguistic choices and patterns in texts’ (Semino 2011: 541). Mullany and Stockwell's (2010) perception of the field of stylistics is one that considers the interconnections of language patterns and how they are understood. They go on to assert that despite stylisticians considering the full range of available texts, the particular focus of stylistics is on literary works,

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representing the most prestigious form of language use. In respect to the development of stylistic studies, Trask (2007) asserts that

early stylistics in the 1960s and 1970s focused on semantic and syntactic aspects of poetry, largely; the 1980s saw an expansion drawing on pragmatics and discourse analysis into extended prose fiction and drama; the 1990s and recent work has drawn heavily on cognitive science to produce a cognitive poetics and on computational linguistics to produce a corpus stylistics.

(Trask 2007: 280–1) It is valuable to consider that stylistics is no longer exclusive to literary texts, but extends beyond these to encompass all manner of texts or other text-based works such as films (e.g. see McIntyre 2010). Simpson (2004) explains why stylistics places such importance on language in interpreting texts when he states:

Stylistics is a method of textual interpretation in which primacy of place is assigned to language. The reason why language is so important to stylisticians is because the various forms, patterns and levels that constitute linguistic structure are an important index of the function of the text. 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.

(Simpson 2004: 2)

Simpson (2004) thus emphasises the relationship between the interpretation of the text through stylistics and the manner in which language is employed by the author, and while the linguistic characteristics may not reveal the intended meaning per se, they do offer valuable potential to consider the potential meaning(s) through comprehension of the author’s prevailing linguistic features.

Bradford (1997) believes that ‘[s]tylistics can tell us how to name the constituent parts of a literary text and enable us to document their operations’ (Bradford 1997: xii). In addressing the activity of stylistics, Bradford (1997) states:

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Stylistics might thus seem to offer itself as an easily definable activity with specific functions and objectives: Stylistics enables us to identify and name the distinguishing features of literary texts, and to specify the generic and structural subdivisions of literature.

(Bradford 1997: xi) Verdonk (2002) believes that stylistics embraces ‘the study of style, which can be defined as the analysis of distinctive expressions in language and the description of its purpose and effect’ (Verdonk 2002: 4). Trask (2007) indicates towards the notion that stylistics is the application of ‘the analytical techniques of theoretical linguistics to the elucidation of literary works and to the examination of the aesthetic aspects of language generally’ (Trask 2007: 280).

Cook (2008) advocates positioning stylistics within the domain of text analysis studies through an exploration of Stubbs’s (2005) beliefs by addressing issues related to stylistics as being sciences which ‘[seek] to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, replicable by other analysts, expounding objective facts about language use’ or representing art that ‘evaluates and prescribes, imposing the writer's views upon the external world, saying as much about the analyst as the analysed’ (Cook 2008: 305). Other issues related to the positioning of stylistics explored by Cook (2008) include the distinction between literary criticism and stylistics, and also the difference between stylistics and quantitative stylistics, and the issue of semantic/discourse prosodies’ evaluation or calculation. The concept of style utilised by corpus stylistics, and the link between stylistics in general and corpus stylistics in particular will be explained later in this chapter, in section 3.4.

In its general sense, stylistics is ‘the study of style’ (Leech 2008: 54; Wales 2011: 399). Leech and Short (2007) define the nature of the study by considering stylistics as ‘the (linguistic) study of style’ (Leech & Short 2007: 11). The two key stylistics-grounded concepts arising from these definitions are linguistic study and style.

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In this context linguistic study is concerned, as Busse and McIntyre (2010) observe, with 'the intra-linguistic features of a text’ (Busse & McIntyre 2010: 6). Moreover, as Jeffries and McIntyre (2010) clearly state, the study of stylistics 'uses models of language, analytical techniques and methodologies from linguistics to facilitate the study of style in its widest sense' (Jeffries & McIntyre 2010: 1). In contrast to literary studies, where style refers to a broader range of features so as to signpost the ‘distinctive patterning of language associated with an author, movement or period amounting to a “verbal fingerprint” or “verbal trademark”’ (Montgomery et al. 2007: 359; bold in original), the style in stylistic studies primarily concerns itself with the linguistic features of the text. As Wales (2011) asserts, this focus on the linguistic features of a text implies that

‘[t]he goal of most stylistic studies is to show how a text “works”: but not simply to describe the FORMAL features of the texts for their own sake, but in order to show their FUNCTIONAL significance for the INTERPRETATION of the text; or in order to relate literary effect or themes to linguistic “triggers” where these are felt to be relevant.’

(Wales 2011: 400; emphasis in original)

Jeffries and McIntyre (2010) reformulate this view by stating that ‘analysing style means looking systematically at the formal features of a text and determining their functional significance for the interpretation of the text in question’ (Jeffries & McIntyre 2010: 1).