الاسم: بنين عدنان جعفر 

كلية التربية للعلوم الإنسانية – قسم اللغة الإنكليزية 

“Markers of Stylistic Analysis: Linguistic Features and Their Literary Implications”

By: Baneen Adnan

Stylistics Markers 

Stylistics investigates the relation between the writer’s artistic achievements, and how it is achieved through language. That is, it studies the relation between the significances of a text, and the linguistic characteristics in which they are manifest. 

This implies two criteria of relevance for the selection of stylistic features: a literary criterion and a linguistic criterion. we should become alert to those particular features of style which call for more careful investigation. Such salient features of style may be called style markers (Leech & Short, 2007). 

What are the style markers? 

 Style markers are those linguistic features deliberately deployed in a given text or discourse by an author, to encode aspects of meaning and also achieve particular aesthetic effects. They are the linguistic features of texts which are significant for their semantic implications and aesthetic functions. 

In other words, for an aspect of language use to be considered a style marker in a particular text, it must have visual and imaginative appeal or effect on the reader or audience. An identification of style markers in textual analysis is expedient since it is not possible or useful to explore all the linguistics choices made by a given author. 

Olujide (2002) explains this view inter alia: For the purpose of selecting stylistic features, style markers (salient features of style) are used. Once these have been identified, whole areas of language which are not used in any unusual way in a text are ignored, since no author can use all the aspects of a language code in a particular text. 

The foregoing implies that stylistic analysis focuses on the significant, salient or foregrounded aspects of an author ‟s linguistic coding in a text, in relation to the social or pragmatic contexts. It involves the identification, description and interpretation of linguistics features which stand out within a text, whether they conform to the common core of language use or are used in a deviant form.

Provide examples about the style markers

Stop words (is, are, am, of)  

Example: From William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”:

   “To be, or not to be, that is the question.”   In this famous soliloquy, the use of the stop word “is” emphasizes the existential dilemma faced by Hamlet.

Hedges:(kind of ,perhaps ,sort of ,may be…)

Example: From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”:

   “It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms – but apparently there were no such intentions in her head.”   In this passage, the phrase “it seemed to me” serves as a hedge, indicating the narrator’s uncertainty or subjective interpretation of the situation.

Ellipsis:  Example From: “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway:           

“Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”

In this sentence, the ellipsis is implied by the omission of the repeated phrase “they were” before “cheerful and undefeated,” creating a concise description while maintaining the focus on the old man’s eyes. , etc.. 

This article explores stylistic markers as distinctive linguistic features authors use to convey meaning and achieve aesthetic effects. By focusing on salient elements like stop words, hedges, and ellipsis, stylistic analysis reveals deeper layers of interpretation and artistic expression within texts.