The Structure of Stylistics
Stylistics is a branch of linguistics, which embraces also such disciplines as phonetics, morphology, lexicology, and syntax. A student would never mistake lexicology for phonetics or otherwise. This comes from the fact that the enumerated subjects are level disciplines, i.e. disciplines treating one linguistic level each. The French linguist E. Benveniste used the word ‘level’ to characterize the hierarchical structure of language.
The smallest unit of language is a phoneme. Several phonemes constitute a unit of higher level, a morpheme. One or more morphemes make a word, or a ‘lexeme’, i.e. the lexical level. One or more word makes an utterance, or a sentence. Hence, the sentence level. We can also single out paragraph level and even text level. In other words, we discover that language presents a hierarchy of levels, from the lowest up to the highest.
Each level is described by a ‘level discipline’: phonetics, morphology, lexicology, syntax. Of course, stylistics does not fit in here. For stylistics is not a level discipline (just as history of language is), because stylistics pertains to all the levels, to every level. Stylistics must be subdivided into separate, quite independent branches, treating one level each: stylistic phonetics, stylistic morphology, stylistic lexicology, stylistic syntax.
Stylistic phonetics pays attention to a style-forming phonetic features, it describes variants of pronunciation occurring in different types of speech. Special attention is paid to prosodic features of prose and poetry.
Stylistic morphology is interested in grammatical forms and grammatical meanings that are peculiar to particular sublanguage.
Stylistic lexicology is closely connected with lexicology, since there are many overlapping aspects.
Stylistic syntax shows that particular constructions are met with in various types of speech, what syntactical structures are style-forming in the sublanguage in question.
Linguistic stylistics and literary stylistics are two separate and at the same time interconnected branches of stylistics (Arnold, pp. 11-15). Linguistic stylistics studies functional styles of a language and the elements of language from the point of view of their ability to express and cause emotions, associations, etc. Linguistic stylistic must be subdivided due to the fact that language presents a hierarchy of levels, from the lowest up to the highest and each level is described by what we call a "level discipline": stylistic phonetics, stylistic morphology, stylistic syntax, stylistic lexicology. This branch studies the expressive possibilities of a language.
Literary stylistics studies expressive means and stylistic devices characteristic for a definite work of art, man of letter, literary movement, trend or epoch, and factors influencing the expressiveness of language. Literary stylistics is closely connected with poetics and theory of literature. Poetics is the science studying the structure of works of literature and the system of aesthetic means used in them. This branch studies the way language is used by a definite person or literary movement.
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