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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Language is the distinctive quality unique to man. It is what enables man to express him/herself and communicate with his/her fellow man, and it is acquired naturally. According to Fromkin et al “…language is the source of human life and power” (3). They also state that “we use language to convey information to others…, ask questions…, give command…, and express wishes” (173).  There are two specific media of using language: oral – which is by words of mouth; and written – which is a graphic representation of words on paper.

It is in the use of language that style comes in. Style shows the difference between one piece of writing and the other. According to Adejare, “style is an ambiguous term…” (1). He further states that the term style means different things to different professions. Some examples are: to a psychologist, style is a form of behaviour, to the critic, style is individuality and to the linguist, it is the formal structures in function (1).

Stylistics is the study of oral and written texts. It is the description of the linguistic characteristics (which means features of linguistics) of all situationally restricted uses of language. Linguistics is the scientific study of language or of a particular language. Linguistics is scientific because it applies the method of objective observation, collection, classification and application of facts to the study of language.

Stylistics focuses on texts and gives much attention to the devices, parts of speech and figures of speech. It goes further to look into the effects of the use of the devices on the reader.

Talking about the scope of stylistics, Onwukwe Ekwutosi gave four distinctive types of stylistics and they are:

1.  General stylistics

2.  Literary stylistics

3.  Stylo-stylistics

4.  Phono-stylistics

General stylistics deals with the non-dialectical varieties found within a language. In other words, it deals with situational or contextual use of language, that is, variation according to use. It also includes variation of language according to field of discourse, variation according to mode of discourse and finally, variation according to style of discourse.

Literary stylistics deals with language use in literature, that is, variations, characteristics of individual writer that made mark in literature. Often, we hear people talk about the style of Shakespeare, Milton, Achebe or Soyinka. And also, stylo-stylistics deals with the qualification of stylistic pattern. It studies the statistical structure of literary texts often using computers. Finally, phono-stylistics is the study of expression of aesthetic function of sound.

Stylistic features can be described as features that produce style. They include linguistic features such as diction(writer’s choice of words, such as clichés, archaism, polysyllabic, monosyllabic), sentence structure such as loose and period sentences, parallelism, parenthetical expressions and passive expressions. Other features are cohesion, coherence, use of punctuation marks and figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, hyperbole, metonymy and personification, slang, colloquialism and connotation.