


































Education, Society and Human Studies 
ISSN 2690-3679 (Print) ISSN 2690-3687 (Online) 

Vol. 6, No. 1, 2025 

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1 

Original Paper 

On Literary Stylistics 

Zhang Zhiqin
1* 

1 
Foreign Languages Department of Taiyuan Normal University, Shanxi, China 

* 
Zhang Zhiqin, Foreign Languages Department of Taiyuan Normal University, Shanxi, China 

 

Received: April 13, 2024         Accepted: April 22, 2024        Online Published: April 30, 2025 

doi:10.22158/eshs.v6n1p1                         URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/eshs.v6n1p1 

 

Abstract 

Literary stylistics is a discipline mediating between linguistics and literary criticism. Its concern can be 

simply and broadly defined as thematically and artistically motivated verbal choices, which is a 

progression from linguistic form to literary significance or interpretation. This paper explicates the 

foregrounding theory and interpretative process. 

Keywords 

literary stylistics, foregrounding, interpretative process 

 

1. Introduction 

Literary stylistics is a discipline mediating between linguistics and literary criticism. Its concern can be 

simply and broadly defined as thematically and artistically motivated verbal choices. In other words, as 

the object of investigation, it refers to thematic and aesthetic values generated by linguistic forms, 

values which convey the author’s vision, tone and attitude, which embody the mingling or shifting of 

points of view, which add to the affective or emotive force of the message, which contribute to 

characterization and make fictional reality function more effectively in the thematic unity. This 

investigation is a progression from linguistic form to literary significance or interpretation. This 

progression, having the theoretical foundation, involves three correlated levels: structural features, 

psychological value and literary significance. The paper will begin with the explication of the 

foregrounding theory. For the question maybe asked what particular linguistic features in a text are 

going to be relevant to interpretation. Analysts often restrict themselves to those features which, for 

some reason or other, attract some degree of foregrounding. Then I will discuss the theoretical 

foundation. Thirdly, the process of interpretation will be touched on.  

 

 

 



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2. The Theory of Foregrounding 

Foregrounding is considered as the most basic feature in literary language and demarcation line 

between literature and non-literature, Short termed stylistics as “linguistically deviant, and therefore 

foregrounded”. The notion was first put forward by Mukrovsky of the Prague School. By 

foregrounding he means that “the aesthetic exploration of language takes the form of surprising a 

reader into a fresh awareness of, and sensitivity to, the linguistic medium which is normally taken for 

granted as an automatized background of communication.” He emphasizes that the main manifestation 

of foregrounding is deviation. Later Halliday defines it as not only deviation from a norm but 

attainment of a norm. Leech and Short specify that deviation is a matter of degree, hence, qualitative, 

i.e., deviation from the language code itself—a breach of some rule or convention of English—or 

quantitative, i.e., deviance from some expected frequency. 

2.1 Deviation 

Deviation is departure from the norm, which is itself relative and hard to define. We can talk about the 

norm of a historical period, the norm of a writer, or even the norm manifested in a text. But a creative 

writer can sometimes go outside the conventions of a language for special effects. Such deviations are 

called external deviations because the norm is determined outside the text. As Widdowson argues: 

Literary discourse is characterized by the creation of language patterns over and above those which are 

required by the linguistic code and these patterns bestow upon the linguistic items within them certain 

meanings which, when fused with the signification these items have as code elements, constitute their 

unique semantic value. The following are a few random examples: 

The rain set early in tonight, 

The sullen wind was soon awake, 

It tore the elm-tops down for spite, 

And did its best to vex the lake. [Browning] 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes, 

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes. [Eliot] 

A large number of selection restriction violations involve giving the feature of animacy (or/+animate/) 

to nouns which are specified as inanimate (or/animate/) in the description of the language system. 

Widdowson has also tried to show how the literary discourse deviate from substitution table where the 

items on the horizontal plane are syntagmatically related and those on the vertical plane are 

paradigmatically related. Here is an example: 

 

 

 

 

 



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Table 1. Substitution 

 

The items in each column are equivalent from the structural point and whichever is chosen will, when 

combined with the items in the other columns, form a correct sentence. Thus nurse and teacher are 

equivalent but not Arthur and Harold Wilson, which are equivalent to each other. Again, disappeared 

and objected are equivalent, appearing as they do in the same column, but they are not equivalent to 

shot or ridiculed but only to shot the Archbishop of Canterbury or ridiculed a man from the BBC since 

it is these verb phrases and not the verbs themselves which share the same column as the intransitive 

verb phrases. 

What the substitution table makes clear is that a sentence is both a selection and a combination and 

these two can be said to be the basic principles of linguistic organization. But Widdowson points out 

that in literary discourse, a selection is made of a series of items from the same column and equivalence 

is thereby transferred from the vertical plane of selection to the horizontal plane of combination. Thus, 

the lines quoted from Eliot’s Four Quartets 

Words strain, 

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, 

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, 

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, 

Will not stay still. 

might be arranged into a substitution table: 

 

Table 2. Substitution 

 

 

 

 

 

Words 

Strain 

crack 

break 

 

under the burden. 

under the tension. 

slip. 

Slide. 

perish. 

decay with imprecision. 

will not stay in place. 

will not stay still. 

 

The nurse 

teacher 

Disappeared. 

Objected.  

Arthur 

Harold Wilson 

shot  

ridiculed 

a man from the BBC. 

the Archbishop of Canterbury. 



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Such a table yields a number of paradigmatic choices which can be made to form a complete sentence: 

Words strain under the burden, Words slip, Words decay with imprecision, Words will not stay still and 

so on. What Eliot does, however, is to combine all the choices so that the linguistic elements become 

equivalent in combination as well as in selection, and the distinction between paradigmatic and 

syntagmatic relations is neutralized in this context. It happens to fit in with Jacobson’s assertion, “The 

poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of 

combination”. 

A text may set up its own secondary norms. The features of language within a text may depart from the 

norms of the text itself: they may stand out against the background of what the text has led us to expect. 

This is the phenomenon of internal deviation. A case in point is a sudden variation in sentence 

complexity in Hemingway’s The old Man and the Sea. The culmination of the old Man’s battle with the 

fish is related in unusually complex sentences, conveying a climatic frenzy of movement against the 

background of Hemingway’s more usual simplicity of style. The contrast can be appreciated if we first 

quote a more characteristic passage from the same episode. 

[1] That way nothing is accomplished, he thought. His mouth was too dry to speak but he could not 

search for the water now. I must get him alongside this time, he thought. I am not good for many more 

turns. Yes you are, he told himself. You’re good forever. On the next turn he nearly had him. But again 

the fish righted himself and swam slowly away. 

[2] He took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride and he put it against 

the fish’s agony and the fish came over onto his side and swam gently on his side, his bill almost 

touching the planking of the skiff, and started to pass the boat, long, deep, wide, silver and barred with 

purple and interminable in the water. The Old Man dropped the line and put his foot on it and lifted the 

harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength, and more strength he had just 

summoned, into the fish’s side just behind the great chest fin that rose high in the air to the altitude of 

the man’s chest. He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his 

weight after it.  

2.2 Parallelism 

The other major form of foregrounding is through parallelism which is over regularity in language use. 

The creative writer may restrict himself in language choice, which shows parallelism or repetition. 

For foregrounding through parallelism, we try to look for both the similarities and dissimilarities in it. 

Let us look at an example taken from A Tale of Two Cities. 

It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; 

it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; 

it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; 

it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; 

We had everything before us, we had nothing before us; 



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We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. 

This passage is full of syntactic parallelism which leads to foregrounding. In effect, it is made up of 

seven series of antithesis, each one including two conflicting words. The number of words in each 

clause is the same, except the last one, in which the other way has broken up the pattern set up by the 

previous lines, and thus secured much emphasis to itself. “The other way” is, actually “we were all 

going”. Therefore, it displays vividly before us the social reality rife with conflicts and disturbances. 

Placed in the beginning, it reveals explicitly the theme of the novel. 

Another example from I Have a Dream is to show how the main idea is foregrounded through parallel 

structure. 

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. 

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation 

and the chains of discrimination.  

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of 

material prosperity. 

One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds 

himself an exile in his own land. 

Here we can see clearly the parallel structure leading to foregrounding. Each of the four lines consists 

of the same adverbial phrase followed by an independent clause, all of which carry a similar contextual 

meaning. The first clause is the starting statement, which expresses the main idea of the passage. The 

following are the restatements, which effectively hammer at the main idea by repeating and 

emphasizing it in different words. So the passage foregrounds the main idea by restatements. 

 

3. The Process of Interpretation 

The interpretative process of literary stylistics depends on interpretative experience and intuition. While 

it stresses close reading of the text and grounds the intuition on evidence, most stylisticans relate 

interpretation to language description. By reading the text repeatedly, they single out the linguistic 

features relevant to thematic significance and aesthetic effect and analyse them employing apparatus of 

linguistic description and then elucidate their literary significance. In such stylistic study, description 

and interpretation are inseparable. The linguistic features that are described are those, after being 

interpreted, artistically relevant, whereas the linguistic observation in its turn reinforces or modifies 

interpretation. The process is demonstrated by Nash in a figure 

 

 

 

 

 



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Intuition 

 

Perception of linguistic/stylistic devices 

                                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Interpretative Process 

 

According to Nash, the reading of a prose text is a process of mutually supportive responses. Intuition 

(literary sensitivity, a predisposition to find patterns of meaning) is vital, but after the first impulses it 

does not continue to work unprompted. Further promptings come with the observation of 

linguistic/stylistic features which are marked by pairings, contrasts or some other method of 

foregrounding. Intuition is thus strengthened or modified, and is equipped to begin the definition of 

structural levels in the text. The discovery of one level involves the perception of another, and 

meanwhile the detection of linguistic features continues supporting or qualifying the structural 

interpretation, guiding the intuition to further discoveries. This process has its theoretical foundation. 

3.1 The Theoretical Foundation 

The existence of stylistics is justifiable in terms of theoretical legitimacy, i.e., backed up by a set of 

underlying conventions. The major concern in this section is to make explicit the theoretical foundation. 

As Burton states: 

All observation, let alone description, must take place within an already constructed theoretical 

framework of socially, ideologically and linguistically constructed reality, whether the 

observer/describer of observations is articulately aware of that frame work or not. 

As regards its theoretical foundation, let us consider an analysis of a short poem translated from the 

Chinese original by Arthur Wally: 

Swiftly the years, beyond the recall. 

Solemn the stillness of this spring morning says. 

These two poetic lines exhibit a skillful use of syntax to mime the meaning. line 1 is “incomplete” in a 

sense not applicable to line 2. The adverb swiftly leads us to expect verb which could still appear after 

beyond recall (read aloud, the intonation should preserve that possibility). The second line, therefore 

breaks in upon line 1, as if line 1 were short of time, and in incompleteness it represents time stilled 

instead of snatched away. In the case, we can see a “parallel” between syntactic form and literary 

interpretation. In its understanding, intuition constitutes one of the two direct involved factors. 

However, as distinct from such a case as, say, the sight of a tiger causing a sense of horror, the 

Awareness  

of  

non-literary  

Sign systems, 

etc  

 

Response to  

aesthetic  

patterns in  

art  

generally 

Structural  

level 1 

plane of  

articulation 

 

Structural  

level 2  

plane of  

information 

 



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subjective impression prompted by a linguistic form is not a matter of simply instinctive response. 

Underlying the stylistician’s response there exist certain literary conventions that constitute the 

theoretical foundation of the stylistician’s argumentation. The existence of the underlying conventions 

“guide the interpretative process and impose severe limitations on the set of acceptable or plausible 

readings”. In Structuralist Poetics, Culler argues at length about literature as an institution about (the 

implied) readers as readers equipped with literary competence (that is a set of conventions for reading 

literary texts, and the reading activity as a rule governed process of producing meanings. Thus Culler 

states: to read a text as literature is not to...approach it without preconceptions; one must bring to it an 

implicit understanding of the operations of literary discourse which tells one what to look for. 

Shen Dan argues that three conventions constitute the basic theoretical foundation both of stylistician’s 

claim and of the reader’s acceptance of such a claim,—(a) the rule of significance, (b) there being some 

analogy or parallel, (c) thematic unity of form and content. Only due to the existence of convention (a), 

will a writer manipulate linguistic forms to achieve certain effects. Convention (b)makes the point that 

“to be an experienced reader of literature is, after all, to have gained a sense of what can be done with 

literary works and thus to have assimilated a system which is largely interpersonal”. By virtue of 

convention (c), the stylistician always takes into account features which surround the linguistic forms 

concerned in context. It is a fundamental principle that directs the interpretative process and imposes 

severe limitations on the acceptable or plausible readings.  

These conventions are at work in the interpretative process. They constitute the theoretical foundation 

of the stylisticians’ mode of argumentation and form the criteria with which to gauge the plausibility of 

an analysis. The interpretative process, grounded on the conventions, accords with the image used by 

Spitzer of the philological circle. 

3.2 Philological Circle of Spitzer 

Philological circle, a kind of interpretative model, was proposed by Spitzer, Father of Literary Stylistics. 

He advocated that critics should treat a text synchronically by working from the surface of a text to its 

“inward life-centre” and then, on “arrival” at the centre to integrate the details of analysis into “the 

creative principle which may have been present in the soul of the artist”. Once this done, you then 

make the return trip to the surface of the text. This process he called the “philological circle”. 

Spitzer argues that the reader is struck by a detail which is followed by a conviction that this detail is 

connected basically with the work of art. This means that the analysis begins on an intuitive 

observation, which in turn raises a question about textual meaning that then requires an answer. But as 

Spitzer points out, there is no way to guarantee “either the impression or the conviction”, they are the 

result of talent, experience and faith. He wrote: 

...all beauty has a mysterious quality which does not appear at first glance. But there is no more reason 

for dodging the description of the aesthetic phenomenon than of any natural phenomenon...I would 



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maintain that to formulate observations by means of words is not to cause the artistic beauty to 

evaporate in vain intellectualities; rather it makes for a widening and a deepening of the aesthetic taste. 

Here is an argument that analysis of literary texts by linguistic means is not brutalizing of a work of art, 

but a worthwhile intellectual pursuit that sees the text as a series of clues to understanding a 

significance beyond language; beyond what the words of the text mean. 

Leech and Short consider the philological circle as a cyclic motion whereby linguistic observation 

stimulates or modifies literary insight, and whereby literary insight in its turn stimulates further 

linguistic observation. This motion is something like the cycle of theory formulation and theory testing 

which underlies scientific method. The cycle is represented in a figure. 

 

 

 

                                         

                                         

 

Seeking Esthetic Function     A             B     seeking linguistic evidence 

                                 

 

 

 

Figure 2. Philological Circle 

 

4. Structural Features, Psychological Value and Literary Significance 

Linguistic form covers many specific categories such as surface syntactic choice, lexical choice, 

figurative expression, metre, alliteration, or modes of speech presentation. These linguistic features are 

constituted by virtue of the relation or contrast of these structures to their paradigmatically or 

syntagmatically related structural elements. Such relations or contrasts, often give rise to quite constant 

psychological values. In the conventionalized syntactic hierarchy, a subordinate clause is seen to be 

psychologically less prominent than a corresponding main clause. Similarly, the mode of direct speech 

is seen to have more immediacy or impact by contrast to indirect speech, The different psychological 

values taken on by linguistic features are frequently exploited in literary contexts as a means of 

achieving various thematic significance. The following passage from Joseph Heller’s novel, Catch-22 

is a case in point. 

It was a night of surprises for Appleby, who was as large as Yossarian and as strong and who swung at 

Yossarian as hard as he could with a punch that flooded Chief White Halfoat with such joyous 

excitement that he turned and busted Colonel Moodus in the nose with a punch that filled General 

Dreedle with such mellow gratification that he had Colonel Cathcart throw the chaplain out of the 

officers’ club and ordered Chief White Halfoat moved into Doc DaneeKa’s tent, where he could be kept 

Literary Appreciation 

Linguistic Description 



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under a doctor’s care twenty-four hours a day and be kept in good enough physical condition to bust 

Colonel Moodus in the nose again whenever General Dreedle wanted him to. 

In depicting a brisk sequence of events, the writer uses a long run on sentence to generate an effect of 

everything happening at once. There is here a shorter distance between the basic psychological effect of 

“the syntax being interconnected” and the contextual significance of “the eventing being interconnected, 

to the point of a pseudo-simultaneity”. 

Another example: 

Curley’s fist was swinging when Lennie reached for it (John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, Ch.3) 

This sentence has been discussed by Leech and Short: the second clause of this sentence describes the 

turning point in the fight between Lennie and Curley, and yet Lennie’s action is backgrounded by its 

subordinate status. On the face of it, Steinbeck would have done better to write something like: “As 

Curley’s fist was swinging, Lennie reached for it”. But what he did write fits in very well with his 

overall strategy in the novel, that of absolving Lennie of responsibility for his actions. By downgrading 

Lennie’s part in the fight, he makes it seem an inadvertent and blameless reaction to Curley’s 

onslaught. 

From the two cases mentioned, it is important to note that syntactic connection does have to do with the 

connection between events. That is to say, syntactic relation is conventionally used to reflect or 

underline the relation between events, syntactic subordination is used to foreground or background 

events. Similarly, passive voice offers a means of obscuring the agent role; indirect speech, in contrast 

to direct speech, provides a means of toning down and distancing the speech. There is an intrinsic link 

between the basic psychological effect associated with the linguistic features and the thematic 

significance associated with the features in the given literature context. 

 

5. Conclusion 

The paper has made an inquiry into the foregrounding theory, the interpretative process so that we can 

have a better knowledge of literary stylistics, which in turn contributes to our interpretation and 

appreciation of literary works. 

 

References 

Burton, D. (1982). Through Glass Darkly: Through Dark Glasses. In Carter (Ed.), Language and 

Literature. London. George Allen & Unwin. 

Culler, J. (1975). Structuralist Poetics. London: Routledge. 

Dan, S. (1998). Literary Stylistics and Fictional Translation. Beijing: Beijing University Press. 

Haliday, & Hasan. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman. 

Leech, G., & Short, M. (1985). Style in Fiction. London: Longman. 

 



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Nash, W. (1982). On a Passage from Lawrence’s “Odour of Chrysanthemums”. In Carter (Ed.), 

Language and Literature. London: George Allen & Unwin. 

Short, M. (1984). Who is Stylistics? Journal of Foreign Language, (5). 

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Turner, G. W. (1975). Stylistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, reprinted. 

Widdowson, H. G. (1975). Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature. London: Longman. 


