Style Is Culturally Determined Notions of Style Differ from One Culture to Another

STYLISTICS

Style is relational – we judge art, music, fashion, literature etc. in relation to changing norms and standards

Style is culturally determined – notions of style differ from one culture to another

Style is connected with notions of what is appropriate or expected in a particular context

An individual may choose to conform to what is seen as appropriate or standard, or not – style involves individual (group) choice

Style and language

Style is a textual phenomenon and should be studied both in terms of particular linguistic forms in a text and as the effects generated by those same forms on the consumer (reader) by the producer of the text (the writer).

Carter, R.A. & Nash, W. (1990: 21)

Stylistics attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language.

stylistics n. (used with a singular v.) the study and description of the choices of linguistic expression that are characteristic of a group or an individual in specific communicative settings, esp. in literary works (Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 1996)

stylistics: a branch of linguistics concerned with the study of characteristic choices in use of language, esp. literary language, as regards sound, form, or vocabulary, made by different individuals or social groups in different situations of use (Collins Dictionary)

We talk about stylistically marked or unmarked use of language

Marked use is deviation from the usual expectation with regard to form, meaning or function

Marked in relation to: time, place, user, situation, u

Stylistics is descriptive rather than prescriptive (although you can get style guides for many written genres)

Choice patterns: people can identify which of a given number of ways of saying something is most appropriate in a given situation.

Why does all this matter to translators?

STYLISTIC LEVELS

With regard to language, style works at a number of overlapping levels...

phonology

alliteration, assonance, rhyme, rhythm, sound quality

poetic use (literature, ads)

Pride and Prejudice

Sense and Sensibility

The Sound of Silence

Seduced by Seville

Falling in love (again) with Slovenia, a land of bears, bees, brides and bountiful nature.

It was coal, cotton and capital, not derring-do or district officers, on which Britain’s world empire was built.

Fair is foul and foul is fair

Hug a hoodie

Come on baby, light my fire

Beanz Meanz Heinz

Schhh... you know who

Nothing sucks like an Electrolux

We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others.

Iain Banks Complicity

lexico-grammatical

core vocabulary vs legal, literary, medical, technical etc.

e.g. break – fracture, murder – homicide, glue – adhesive

jargon or terminology (register):

e.g. the police: apprehend, suspect, proceeding, observe, in a westerly direction

e.g. translation: source, target, transfer, encoding, decoding, mining (a corpus)

(compare: journalism, police, football, computing)

axis written - spoken

e.g. obtain – get, request – ask, require – need, purchase – buy, signify – mean

levels of formality

e.g.. event – do, condom – johnny (rubber, French letter, Frenchie), stomach – tummy

stylistic effect

The book tells the tale of Frodo Baggins, a Hobbit who suddenly finds himself faced with an immense task: He must leave his home in The Shire, and make a perilous journey across the realms of Middle-Earth to the Crack of Doom, deep inside the territories of the Dark Lord. There he must destroy the One Ring forever and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

use of particular syntactic patterns / ungrammaticality

When I hold you in my arms

And I feel my finger on your trigger

I know that nobody can do me no harm

from The Beatles Happiness is a Warm Gun

Just gimme the light and pass the dro! Buss anotha bottle a moe
Gal dem inna mi sight and I got to know (Yo, yo, yo yo yo)
Which one is gonna catch my flow
Cause mi inna di vibe and I got my dough!

from Sean Paul Gimme the Light

Comments:

Name: / Comments:
roger / wkd m8 fuckin brilln't do u do more
iladel81 / This song sucks. I actually listened to the whole song. I thought Beyonce's version was bad. Her version is fire compared to this crap.
da boss / this shit is mingin an i would burn the stupid fucker that sand this fiddy rules check out a real website www.mycrappylittlegangsterfreewebswebsite.com
homie13765 / 50 cents is better this song is just gay nd sucks
baby4life / this was the dumbest thing that i have ever herd, it wasnt even funny, get a life u loser and make some funny stuff not something so friggen dumb....
hazzy fizzle / yer deff chav anthem and so phunny i like 50 but this is still funny
geordie babe / totally belta gr8 song m8 hueva sang it iz a genius
jker / dis aint a jker but i no hu iz :P
Gina_69 / some people just have no sense of humour, this is amazin, i reckon it should be released!! its not takin the piss out of 50 neways#
cool lassy / totally mint bst song eva
luke / ye not bad shizzle.not as good as 50 but still safe,cockny style.
dan / 50 cents an ass nice parody well done and all u chavy asses can get bent
deadsoul / i luv fifty, but this version is 100 times better.
Deadsoul / Fifty. I luv ya but this is some funny ass shit.
lyndzey / hey i fuckin love 50 cent but this song is so fuckin cool
hackney chick / stop hating he hasent done nothing 2 you

Online comments on a 50 Cents parody

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

from Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-89) God’s Grandeur

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

from Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales

discourse (language use in context)

situational norms and conventions

e.g. wedding ceremony: I do (not Yes)

e.g. court: guilty or not guilty (can’t enter a plea of innocent)

e.g. sermon or flight announcements: intonation

relations between participants:

status, familiarity, formal/informal, professional/non-professional

e.g. doctor-patient, pupil-teacher, employer-employee, parent-child

genre / text conventions

the latter differ according to the kind of text

e.g. how to start and end a formal letter, how to lay out a CV, recipes (different in Slovene and English)

e.g. dialogue as shown in: screenplay, stage play, novel, comic strip, interview, news report

G B Shaw Pygmalion

It is Mrs. Higgins's at-home day. Nobody has yet arrived. Her drawing-room, in a flat on Chelsea embankment, has three windows looking on the river; and the ceiling is not so lofty as it would be in an older house of the same pretension. The windows are open, giving access to a balcony with flowers in pots. If you stand with your face to the windows, you have the fireplace on your left and the door in the right-hand wall close to the corner nearest the windows.
[…]
It is between four and five in the afternoon.
The door is opened violently; and Higgins enters with his hat on.
MRS. HIGGINS [dismayed] Henry [scolding him]! What are you doing here to-day? It is my at-home day: you promised not to come. [As he bends to kiss her, she takes his hat off, and presents it to him].
HIGGINS. Oh bother! [He throws the hat down on the table].
MRS. HIGGINS. Go home at once.
HIGGINS [kissing her] I know, mother. I came on purpose. / 5
MRS. HIGGINS. But you mustn't. I'm serious, Henry. You offend all my friends: they stop coming whenever they meet you.
HIGGINS. Nonsense! I know I have no small talk; but people don’t mind. [He sits on the settee].
MRS. HIGGINS. Oh! don’t they? Small talk indeed! What about your large talk? Really, dear, you mustn't stay.
HIGGINS. I must. I’ve a job for you. A phonetic job.
MRS. HIGGINS. No use, dear. I'm sorry; but I can’t get round your vowels; and though I like to get pretty postcards in your patent shorthand, I always have to read the copies in ordinary writing you so thoughtfully send me. / 10
HIGGINS. Well, this isn't a phonetic job.
MRS. HIGGINS. You said it was.
HIGGINS. Not your part of it. I’ve picked up a girl.
MRS. HIGGINS. Does that mean that some girl has picked you up?
HIGGINS. Not at all. I don’t mean a love affair. / 15
MRS. HIGGINS. What a pity!
HIGGINS. Why?
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, you never fall in love with anyone under forty-five. When will you discover that there are some rather nice-looking young women about?
HIGGINS. Oh, I can’t be bothered with young women. My idea of a loveable woman is something as like you as possible. I shall never get into the way of seriously liking young women: some habits lie too deep to be changed. [Rising abruptly and walking about, jingling his money and his keys in his trouser pockets] Besides, they're all idiots.

Mo Yan The Garlic Ballads

A large room with a wooden floor painted red. White plaster shows through the peeling green paint on the walls. Bright daylight shines down from the ceiling on four crackling electric prods. Desks line the northern wall. A male and two female jailers sit behind the desks. One of the women has a face like a persimmon fresh from the garden. He recognizes the words painted on the wall behind them.

A jailer orders him to sit on the floor, for which he is immensely grateful. He is then told to stretch his legs out in front and rest his manacled hands on his knees. He does as he's told.

"Is your name Gao Yang?"

"Yes."

"Age?"

"Forty-one."

"Occupation?"

"Farmer."

"Family background?"

"Um ... my, uh, parents were landlords ..."

"Are you familiar with government policy?"

"Yes. Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who refuse to do so. Not coming clean brings severe punishment."

"Good. Now tell us about your criminal activities of May twenty-eighth."

From The Guardian

Iain Duncan Smith has claimed he could get by on £53 a week - the amount some benefit claimants live on.

The Work and Pensions Secretary currently earns £1,581 a week after tax.

But when asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme if he could live like that, he said: "If I had to I would," and defended the legion of benefit cuts taking effect this month.

He said: "We are in an economic mess.

"We inherited a problem where we simply do not have the money to spend on all the things people would like us to do.

"What I am trying to do is get this so we don't spend money on things that are unfair."

An online petition has now been set up, demanding that: "The current The Work and Pensions Secretary, to prove his claim of being able to live on £7.57 a day, or £53 a week.

"Iain Duncan Smith would be called upon to live on this budget for at least one year. This would help realise the conservative party`s current mantra that 'We are all in this together.'"

e.g. newspaper headlines

1. heavily pre-modified nominal structures

FURNITURE FACTORY PAY CUT RIOT

MASSIVE BANK BAIL OUT

2. articles and the verb to be often omitted

SHAKESPEARE PLAY IMMORAL SAYS HEADMASTER

3. simplified tense system

STUDENTS FIGHT FOR COURSE CHANGES

WORLD HEADING FOR DEPRESSION

QUEEN TO VISIT SLOVENIA

FACTORS DETERMINING STYLISTIC MEANING

¨  time factors

¨  user-related varieties (dialect)

¨  use-related varieties (register)

Time factors

Whether a lexical item is commonly used in present-day English or is obsolete (e.g. abidance), archaic (e.g. asunder, behold, betwixt, whither), old-fashioned (e.g. perambulate, Cheerio, shilling, bob, tanner), falling into disuse (e.g. gramophone, spectacles, school/head master/mistress).

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.