Chapter One: Brief Introduction to Stylistics
Part 1: What is Stylistics about?
1.A Glance at Style
Sample 1:
The Year's at the Spring ! 一年之计在于春
～Robert Browning
❖The year's at the spring 正值一年之春，
❖And day's at the morn; 又逢一日之晨；
❖Morning's at seven; 晨光走到了七点；
❖The hill-side's dew-pearled; 山腰挂着露珠；
❖The lark's on the wing; 云雀展翅高飞；
❖The snail's on the thorn: 蜗牛爬上了荆棘:
❖God's in his Heaven -- 上帝在自己的天堂里——
❖All's right with the world! 尘世间一派井然！
Sample 2:
The Regulation is enacted in accordance with pertinent laws and regulations and in light of the concrete conditions of this Municipality, with the purpose of strengthening the administration of cityscape and environmental sanitation, creating and maintaining a clean, beautiful cityscape and environment, protecting people's health, promoting economic growth, civilization and progress of society.
为了加强市容和环境卫生的管理，保持干净美观的市容环境，保护人民群众的健康，推动经济发展和社会文明进步，根据相关法规和本市的具体情况特此制定本规定。
Sample 3:
Hi-Fi, Hi-Fun, Hi-Fashion, only from Sony (alliteration)
（高保真，高乐趣，高时尚，只来自索尼）
I’m More Satisfied. (pun)
（再来一支，还选摩尔）
Always with you. (China Telecom)
（与你同行）
You’re worth it. (Loreal)
（你值得拥有）
2. What is Style?
There are some diverse meanings of “style”. The origin of the word is “stylus”, Latin for “pen”. From this, the word extended means “a way of writing”, and then becomes further refined to mean “a good way of writing”.
◆Style as form (Aristotle)
（风格即形式）
◆Style as eloquence (Cicero)
（风格即雄辩术）
◆Style is the man (Buffon)
（文如其人）
◆Style as personal idiosyncrasy (Murry)
（风格即个人表达上的特点）
◆Saying the right thing in the most effective way (Enkvist)
（以最有效的方式讲恰当的事情）
◆Style as deviation (Mukarovsky & Spitzer)
（风格即常规变异）
◆Style as prominence (Halliday)
（风格即突出）
❖Style is the essential characteristic of every piece of writing, the outcome of the writer’s personality and his emotions at the moment, and no single paragraph can be put together without revealing in some degree the nature of its author.
~Theodore Savory, a British translation theorist
❖It is universally acknowledged that every writer has a literary style and that his style is reflected in his writing. As everybody knows, both Li Bai and Du Fu were great poets of the Tang Dynasty in China, but their literary styles are different. Li is elegant and forceful whereas Du is profound and thoughtful. So is the case with the style of Henry James and that of Ernest Hemingway. The style of the former is wordy and obscure and that of the latter brief and implicit.
❖However, it’s necessary to realize that the word “style” means differently to literary writing and practical writing.
❖For a literary writer, he has a style which can be deemed as distinctive of or unique to himself or his school of literature.
❖For a practical writer, he can’t claim a style of his own. Actually, each type of practical writing, like legal text, political text, business text, etc., usually has its own style, which can distinguish one type from another. What a practical writer should do is to honor the agreed style rather than develop his own style.
❖In this sense, the stylistic analysis of literary writing in translation process will mean a more complex and arduous task when compared to that of practical writing.
3. Different styles (Martin Joos)
1) Frozen style (庄严体): used in formal occasion like ceremonies.
2) Formal style (正式体): public address
3) Consultative style(商谈体): used in daily lives.
4) Casual style(随意体): among friends
5) Intimate style(亲密体): between family members or bosom friends
Sample:
1) Visitors would make their way at once to the upper floor by way of the staircase. (庄严体)
2) Visitors should go upstairs at once. (正式体)
3) Would you mind going upstairs please? (商谈体)
4) Time you all went upstairs now! (随意体)
5) Up you go, chaps! (亲密体)
