Style and Text: Studies Presented to Nils Erik Enkvist

A basic assumption underlying many approaches to the analysis of style is that ‘manner’ (‘expression’) can be separated from ‘matter’ (‘content’). The purpose of this essay is to suggest certain necessary qualifications and clarifications of this assumption. The main argument is that stylistic analysis must take into account that constituent sentences of a text manifest an underlying ‘macro’ structure (e.g., plot). Some linguistic features reflect the use of literary devices or techniques, such as dialogue, indirect discourse, and ‘disautomatization’. Among the work critiqued is that of Ohmann’s use of transformational grammar in characterizing the styles of Faulkner and Hemingway; and Halliday’s analysis of the ‘style’ of Golding’s The Inheritors.