Stylistics Definition

Stylistics, as part of linguistic studies, describes and studies in depth the way in which the different types of text are constructed, also becoming the governing discipline of the way in which texts are constructed to fulfill different communicative functions.

Based on the concept of stylistics, writing a political speech is not the same as writing an informative note, describing a landscape or telling a story. Linguistics points out the correct forms so that the resulting text meets the specificities of its type. Several ideas come to light when talking about the concept of text. Among the most notable, the following can be consulted:

– Fundamental unit of communication, product of human verbal activity and which always has a social character. It is characterized by its semantic and communicative closure, as well as its coherence (E. Bernández: Introduction to the linguistics of the text).

– Communicative linguistic unit, characterized by adequacy and communicative context, coherence and cohesion (JM Castellá: From the sentence to the text).

– It constitutes the network of linguistic units organized by the interrelation that marks the systemic code of the language. It is offered by a speaker-author to one or more interested listeners-readers (Vidal Lamiquiz).

According to Julia Sanmartín, a text can be a simple word, a poem, a newspaper article, etc. To study it, it is necessary to consider its diversity, since this will depend on the type of text it is. The textual typology determines the kind of text we are dealing with, according to discursive marks that have to do with the lexicon, the ordering of words and phrases, the resources used in their construction and the communicative function to which they respond. .

Background of stylistics

The first ideas regarding style and linguistics come from classical antiquity specifically from rhetoric (the principles of elegant and correct speech, recognized by Aristotle in his Poetics and used by the Greeks). This was known in Greece as lexis and in Rome as elocutio, and it meant that only model sentences and tropes suitable for the type of discourse to be constructed should be followed.

The concept of stylistics arose towards the end of the 19th century with Charles Bally, who called it stylistics of expression and raised the problem of expression, understood as the action of expressing thought through language.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the modern concept arrived, with a strong contribution from the Russian formalist school in this regard. These sought to explain and understand what was the essence of poetic texts. The ideology of the Russian formalists was followed by the Prague school, which included context in the creation of texts.

Currently, the tools used by stylistics are those of formal linguistic analysis and its objective is to isolate the characteristic uses and functions of language.

Main types of text sequences

Among the best known and used text sequences are:

– Dialogue: It is an exchange of information between two or more interlocutors who jointly build the discourse. It is the primary and most universal form of communication and occurs in all cultures. It is also the most important realization of orality, although it is also used in written literature (mainly in the dramatic genre).

– Exposure: It is an explanatory text that appears as a response to a question or issue that is intended to be discussed. It leads to a hypothesis.
Normally definitions, classifications, examples, analogies or quotes are used. Content of this type are ideas, thoughts, opinions. In short, it is the discursive presentation of various thoughts about the same object.

– Argumentation: Seeks that the receiver ends up agreeing with the sender, that he accepts his ideas as true. Use various strategies to make the other think something. It has an antithetical character (by opposing a thesis to an antithesis) and has a structure of premises, that is, it launches arguments to reach a conclusion or conclusions.

– Description: informs about the state of things and supposes a mental representation of the world (imaginary or real). Linguistically, it is dominated by attributive phrases, adjectives, noun complements and adverbs of place in some cases.

– Narration: tells and reports on facts and actions, placing them in a temporal and causal sequence. It is one of the most widely used forms of writing and consists of six elements: temporality (all events occur in a time line), thematic unit (the facts and actions narrated follow one another around a theme), transformation of states (the protagonists of the story evolve psychologically), unity of action (the work in question focuses on a main action, leaving aside secondary actions) and causality (cause and effect relationships occur during the narration). This typology has many action verbs, especially in the past tense, since it recounts something that happened. Another important issue about the narrative is that it is characterized by raising and resolving conflicts during its development.

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