The development of Stylistics

The development of StylisticsIn the WestThe word “stylistics”first appeared in 1882,and the first book on stylistics was written by French scholar Charles Bally,student of the famous modern linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in 1902 and was published in1909,entitled Traite de Stylistique Francaise .This book is often considered as a landmark of modern stylistics.The subject of study in Bally’s time was oral discourse.Bally considered that apart from the denotative meaning expressed by the speaker,there was usually an “overtune”which indicated different “feelings”,and the tasks of stylistics was to find out the linguistic devices indicating these feelings.Later,the German scholar L.Spitzer,began to analyze literary works from a stylistic point of view,and therefore,Spitzer is often considered as the “father of literary stylistics”.From the beginning of 1930s to the end of the 1950s stylistics was developing slowly and was only confined to European continent.During this period,the Russian formalists,the Prague School and the French Structuralists all contributed to the development of stylistics. There emerged some well-known stylisticians,such as E.Auerbach, J.Marouzeau, M.Cressot, R.Jakobson.From the end of the 1950s to the present time,modern stylistics has reached its prosperity.This can be further divided into roughly fourperiods:The first period is from the end of the 1950s to the end of the 1960s,in which,Formalist Stylistics was the prevailing trend.The second period is the 1970s,in which Functionlist Stylistics predominated.The third period is the 1980s,in which Discourse Stylistics flourished.While in the fourth period, the1990s,the Socio-Historical/Socio-Cultural Stylistics or Contextualized Stylistics developed quickly.In the new century,stylistics has developed further.In the departments and institutes of language,literature and linguistics around many universities in the world,stylistics has been one of main courses or subjects of research.Monographs and textbooks on stylistics are published,and research papers on stylistics increasingly appear in the academic journals all over the world.The trend is interdisciplinary study,and narrative stylistics,cognitive stylistics,feminist stylistics,etc.In ChinaChinese stylistics can be traced back to work of literary criticism-The Carving of the Literary Mind by Liu Xie(465-532)in the Southern Dynasty ter there were the generic classification of the Tang poetry,Song prose poems,the Y uan verse poems,and the Ming and Qing novels.The beginning of modern Chinese stylistics is marked by Chen Wangdao’s Principle of Rhetoric(1932)In China,the modern study of stylistics can be divided into two periods.The first period is from the founding of the People’s Republic ofChina to the year 1976,which is the fundamental stage for the development of modern stylistics.Some scholars,such as Wang Zuoliang,Xu Guozhang,Xu yanmou,Yangrenjing,et al.,began to study stylistics in its modern sense.And later some other articles on stylistics got published.But generally speaking,in this period of 28 years,there is no more than 30 articles concerning stylistics got published in China .What is more,there were almost no academic studies during the 10-year “Culture Revolution”(1966-1976)(王守元，et al.,2004)The second period is from 1977 up to the present time.Professor Wang Zuoliang took the lead in this research of modern stylistics.In this period,appear many academic works and textbooks and a large number of articles on stylistics also got published and the number increased with each passing year.And in the new century,stylistics developing even faster.The founding of the Chinese Association of Rhetoric in 1980 marked the new era of Chinese stylistics research,while the founding of China Stylistics Association in 2004 in Henan University during the 4th National Symposium on Stylistics marked the era of studies of Western stylistics in China.The international Stylistics Conference held in Tsinghua University in June 2006 further indicated the development and achievements of stylistics in China.The Scope of StudyThe study of modern stylistics can be divided into three main aspects:General Stylistics,Literary Stylistics and Theoretical Stylistics.Now I introduce it one by one ,which mainly gives your a frame impression about their scopes of study.General StylisticsGeneral stylistics studies different varieties of language.For example,according to field of discourse,with the related functions of language used in different genres,there are varieties such as news reports,advertisement,publish speeches,novels,poetry,scientific treatises,and legal documents.According to attitude ,there are different degrees of formality used on different occasions,such as formal language and informal language.According to medium of communication(mode of discourse),there are spoken language,written language,and e-discourse.According to regions,there are British English,American English and other regional dialects.According to social groups,there are standard language and non-standard language,language used by people of different classes,different sexes,and so on.According to time,there are Old English,Middle English,Modern English,Contemporary English.Literary StylisticsLiterary stylistics studies literary significance as well as linguistic choices in literary texts and also the different styles of individual authors and their works,as well as period styles.Broadly speaking,it study variations characteristic of different literary genres-poetry,prose,novels,drama,etc.,with the purpose of promoting literary texts as communicative acts. Theoretical StylisticsTheoretical stylistics researches the theories,the origin,the trend,and the historical development of stylistics as well as characteristics of different branches of stylistics.It also studies the relationships between stylistics and other branches of learning.。