INDIAN LINGUISTICS

PROLOGUE TO THE STUDY OF STYLISTICS IN BENGALI LANGUAGE.

Abstract: This work tries to define stylistics, and tries to give detailed review of it from the day of its inception from the angle of literary criticism. It tries to show the history of stylistics analysis in India in regard to the world perspective. Other than these, it tries to give a smart overview of the current level of activity from various angles, especially from the points of sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics. It tries to show some examples of Bengali language and tries to draw the attention why a study of this nature may be helpful for the study of Bengali language.

Introduction

The study of stylistics has been practiced in India and abroad from ancient times. It is the study of language where the use of language changes with the different perspectives. Bengali, is an important language of south Asia, with around 220 million speakers. It has a vast literature and has wide content in various forms of publication, from hand written to electronic. Other than these, as it was the language of the people who mainly brought the renaissance in India, a diachronic study on the stylistics aspects of Bengali language gives you a reflection of the development of modern India.
It is not only in India, but also in major parts of the world, Stylistics is studied as a form of literary criticism. Caste is a major aspect of Indian society. It has been investigated by many scholars that language varies with caste.
The linguists of Bengali language have produced various nice works, works of Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, Sukumar Sen, Probal Dasgupta, Aditi Lahiri to name a few. Ravindra Gargesh of Delhi School of Sociology is an important thought in the field of sociolinguistics. The work of B.P.Mullick on the language of underworld of Calcutta made people like William Labov to mention his name with special interest, but in modern days, no serious study perhaps has been made from pure stylistics point of view, especially in Bengali.
This paper tries to give a definition of stylistics analysis, and it tries to give its stress as removed from literary criticism. It tries to stress only on linguistics aspects. Other than that this paper tries to analyze the details of the various terms the scope of their use related to stylistics. Modern day research on the subject has not only gave us people like Halliday and Labov but also tried to give various theories.
In the effort to study the stylistics analysis, the aim is to bring all the related branches of study under one hood and to view stylistics related problems from stylistics point only.

This paper is thus divided in eleven sections. It starts with a small introduction, followed by definition of stylistics, section three deals with the minor aspects related with the study of stylistics, section four deals with the history, section five with aspects of register, section six with the aspects of sociolinguistics, section seven with the aspects of psycholinguistics, section eight shows the modern aspects of research, section nine with the example of stylistics analysis and section ten with a preliminary analysis, finally section eleven with a brief conclusion.

Definition

It is suggested as the study and interpretation of text from linguistic perspective. It also tries to interpret different choices made by different individuals and different social groups in their production of language, and while doing so the interpretation of context is often taken into account. (Wikipedia_Stylistics,2010).
Stylistics is said as the study of the devices of language (such as rhetorical figures and syntactic patterns) that are considered to produce expressive or literary style. According to them style is also seen as a mark of character. (Britannica Online_Stylistics,2010).
Gargesh(2008) tried to define stylistics as a variation with some social parameters and a systematic linguistic choice.
PALA(2010) has suggested it as, the set of linguistic features.

From the above set of definitions, it can be suggested that, Stylistics is the study of the interpretation of text or other kind of communicative behavior which varies according to different personalities of human being in their subconscious level either with the influence of social context or some other influences. The difference is reflected by the different grammatical and quantitative features of language, like morphology, syntax, morphological pattern, syntactic pattern, use of repetition, word length, word frequency, etc. The variation is called style and varies from person to person.

Thus, from the above definition the following features of stylistics is received:

(i) It works with the interpretation of communicative behavior, and thus may include both text and speech. Many eminent linguists try to incorporate it as part of the literary criticism and try to view stylistics of poetry as a very important branch. But it is felt that only stylistics only as of prose and running text should be considered not of poetry. Its development from literary criticism is acknowledged but it is felt that thrust should be on prose, if it is analyzed as major linguistic theories of the day are on prose and running text only. If the poetry is taken into scope, how to analyze phrases and their respective lexical units in the light of rhyme and meter and other aspects of poetry would again be a daunting question. It is thus, felt to get good result from the study and analysis, the scope be limited to prose at least for the time being. Thus, even if in speech, recitations, songs will be out of scope.
(ii) The interpretation tries to study the variation. It can be both procedural and generative.
(iii) The backbone of the interpretation lies mainly with the social and psychological aspect of human being, till now, unless any other aspect is discovered.
(iv) The analysis of the interpretation may be both grammatical and quantitative.

Many people try to view stylistics as a register which will be touched gradually.

Minor aspects Related to the study of Stlylistics

In this section, few related terms like, genre, text types, acrolect, mesolect, basilect, dialect and idiolect which are often used while studying stylistics are defined.

Genre is defined as the term for any category of literature, including poem, music, drama, as well as various other forms of culture which change over time, where new genres are invented and old ones phase out. Lloyd Bitzer, Carolyn Miller, Anis Bawarshi, Kathleen Jamieson are some of the important investigators of the field.

Text types study the interpretation of text according to various criteria, like, explanation, narration, space, arguments, etc. W. Rotter and H. Bendl are the important investigators of the field.

In 1965, William Stewart proposed two terms acrolect and basilect are the two terms, for upper and lower boundaries of post creole speech. Dereck Bickerton popularized these terms and gave mesolect for middle part of post creole speech continuum. Other than them, R. T. Bell, R.R.Meade also investigated these aspects.

Dialect is generally termed as a subgroup of language with all the characterized feature of language. There is no sharp demarcation between dialect and language, but is often said that in language there are many dialects according to different speaking or practice area.

Idiolect is termed as the individual behavior of language, whether it varies in the speech or writing.

Thus, in association with these concepts we can frame stylistics as follows.
Stylistics is a subgroup of genre, and unlike genre it can be both synchronic and diachronic. Stylistics can be said as a type of text type analysis if focus is only on written text, but prose can be verbal too. Acrolect, Basilect and Mesolect can be said as some parameters of stylistics of spoken part in dealing with the post Creole language. Similarly, dialect and idiolect are also some important parameters.

Touching these points helped us to broaden our scope.

History of Stylistics Study

Stylistics investigates how readers interact with the language of texts and other communicative behavior, involving how we understand them and how we treat them.
Its development can be seen as how it combines the use of linguistic analysis, with what we know about the psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic processes. It grew as a part of the literary criticism and later becoming an independent linguistic branch.

Style has been investigated since ancient times. In ancient India, Nirukta had investigated on stylistic treatise of literature. In ancient Greece, Aristotle, Cicero, Demetrius, Quintilian made long treatise on stylistics. In the period of renaissance, essayists catalogued it from model sentences. In modern times, the issue of stylistics has been investigated by Charles Bally, Leo Spitzer who viewed it as a choice among alternative expressions. Edward Sapir had talked about form based literature and content based literature. Count de Buffon expressed it as a mark of character, in his famous saying “Style is the man himself”, Arthur Schopenhauer described it as the “Physiognomy of mind”. The other important people in the field are, Eduard Harmann, Roger Fowler, M.A.K. Halliday, Stanley Smith, Thomas A. Sebeok, Geoffrey Leech, William Empson, Roman Jackobson, I.A. Richards, Barabara H. Smith, Lieberman, Jacoby, Just, Carpenter, Squire, Shimamura, Plimpton, Hirst, Ozick, Cocteau, Raban, Watchtel, Ghiselin, MacDonald, Kosslyn, Koenig,Eysenck,Keane, Baddeley and William Labov to name a few.

It started as a part of the literary criticism, where the interpretation of texts was of more importance than authors. It started initially as practical and new criticism, from where it grew as ‘claim and quote’ strategy where, the stylisticians tried to investigate the logical gap among the quotes. The two important schools that helped the study of stylistics are the Russian Formalists by giving the foreground theory which states that some part of the texts have more influence on readers and the Prague school with their structuralist view which viewed text as a form of structures.

In this regard, we are trying to take instances of some of the important aspects carried on in this field and related to it.

In 1953, Langer made distinction between ‘symbols in art’ and ‘art symbol’ in literary work.
In 1964, McIntosh, Halliday and Steven said that combination of ‘user oriented’ and ‘use oriented’ parameters to form useful classification of contextual features for the language variation.

In 1967, Barthes viewed semiological system of Saussure as, "Every semiological system has its linguistic admixture... In fact, we must now face the possibility of inverting Saussure's declaration: linguistics is not a part of general science of signs, even a privileged part; it is semiology which is a part of linguistics" (Barthes 1967: 10-11).

In 1968, Herzog said that if the language and its components do not vary it would be dysfunctional. He tried to say that a language contains variables like, phonological, lexical or grammatical, which can be observed and their variations can be noted in quantity.
In 1971, Hymes used the notion of communicative competence from where linguistic competence becomes part of much wider aspect of communicative competence.
In 1972, Van Dijk coined the term text linguistics thus giving stress on study and analysis of text.
In 1975, Guiraud told about the ‘logical sign’ and the ‘expressive sign’, to represent denotation and connotation respectively.
In 1978, Goodman said that the work of art constructs their respective worlds, and in the broad scope of fictitiveness style becomes symptomatic of in which style expresses specific features of text, person, etc and covertly by a constructive principle relating signifier and the signified.
In 1978, Halliday said about ‘textual function’, which encompasses over all branches of language as social semiotic.

The study of stylistics also occupies an important respect in Indian context and in Bengali.

In 500 BC, Nirukta studied stylistics as part of literary criticism in his work Yaska, in 200 BC Patanjali studied its linguistic angle in his work Mahabhasya, in 500 A.D. Bharata treated it as part of drama in his work Natyasastra, and in 16th Century Abul Fazl Ibm Mubarak made significant contribution in his work Ain-i-Akbari.

In 1886, Henry Yule and Arthur C. Bunell published a dictionary named Hobson Jobson: Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive on the uses of Anglo Indian community.

In 1896, G.A. Grierson classified 162 languages of Indian subcontinent based on morpho phonemic differences in his book Language Survey of India.

1n 1910, Jules Bloch published a work on the caste dialects of India.

In 1926, Suniti Kumar Chatterji published Origin and Development of Bengali language, where he had shown the detail treatise of the different dialects of Bengali language. Following him, Jagadanada Roy worked on the scientific language in Bengali, Rajsekhar Basu tried to work on the standardization of Bengali language, Sukumar Sen worked in the aspect of the language of Bardhaman district of West Bengal, B.P. Mullick worked on the language of the underworld, Khudiram Das worked extensively on the languages of the aboriginals in Bengali, Aditi Lahiri on the dialect of Kandi subdivision of Murshidabad district, Rajiv Humayun on the languages of mother, and S. DuttaMazumder on the language of advertisement.

In pan Indian scenario, there is a great deal of work on sociolinguistic aspect of various castes.
In 1959, Charles Ferguson published the Diglossia, and in 1960 John G. Gumprez published linguistic aspect of caste differentiation. In 1960, William McCormack tried to investigate the origin and transmission of caste dialects, and A.K. Ramanujam tried to investigate the language difference between Brahmin and non Brahmin dialects in Tamil. William Bright followed Ramanujam’s school of thought and worked on the phonetic and phonemic innovation of Brahmin and non Brahmin dialects. Murray Barnson Emeneau worked on ritual language and ritual culture. P.B.Pandit worked on the sociolinguistic aspect of convergence and language shift. Shammugam Pillai tried to analyze among the code switching among Kanyakumari fisherman. In recent days works of Raja Ram Mehrotra and Ravindra Gargesh draw special attention.

Thus, it is not only all over the world, India and Bengal also bear a rich tradition in the aspect of stylistic study.

Register and Aspects of Systemic Functional Grammar

In linguistic analysis, different styles of language are technically called registers. It relates to properties of language variety in a given situation. MAK Halliday has stressed on the semantic properties of register. Commenting on Halliday’s register, Helen Lackie-Tary pointed that it works on the aspect of language function, and Downes(1998) said that, Halliday’s register is almost recognizable.
In his study of semiology which studies cultural sign processes, analogy, metaphor, signification and communication, into three divisions, namely, field, tenor and mode. Commenting on them David Crystal said, Halliday’s tenor is slightly equivalent to style. And on investigation it is being said, this field is marked with the activity of language usage, and mode refers to the symbolic organization of the situation. Fowler(1996) said that tenor has an affirmation of relationship with the intention of the speaker, expressed in various ways as repetition of words, etc. but are not obviously said within the sentence and is implied.
Downes(1998) said that genre refers to the precoded language, language which is not used before but expresses the meaning that has to be conveyed.
It is a variety of language, used for a particular purpose, in a particular social setting. It denotes the variety of the language used. Wardaugh(1986) tries to equate it jargon which different people use in different social settings. The term was first used by Thomas Bertram Reid, to distinguish between variations of language according to user and according to its usage. The focus is on the way how language is used as motherese or legalese or as the language in bedroom or in the bathroom, etc.

In 1976, Halliday and Hasan, tried to say register in terms of the linguistic features which is termed as the interpretation of situation features.

Hey said 'A text is a passage of discourse which is coherent in these two regards: it is coherent with respect to the context of situation, and therefore consistent in register; and it is coherent with respect to itself, and therefore cohesive'.
Trudgill(1992) prefers to use the term style instead of tenor, and tries to divide it in the five point scale provided by Joos(1961), as, Frozen, Formal, Consultative, Casual and Intimate.
The term Diatype, proposed by Gregory(1967) for the language variation is often used with register.

It refers in linguistics as particular pattern and particular setting of language used for particular purpose. It expresses the authority and formal nature of the use of language. Linguists point here the variation of language use and not in terms of user. Some linguists argue against it for its nature of prescriptive and descriptive judgement.
Dialect Variation is a semi permanent nature of language and is denoted in everyday rapid use of language. It helps us to distinguish one person from another and one dialect group from another. For example, the language we use to write class notes differs from the language of writing letters. This variation of language is studied in register and we try to determine this variation by medium, tenor and field, three independent and mutually overlapping conditions to denote the change. Medium means whether it is spoken way or written way, domain means the subject matter, and tenor means, the way of expression of the language, like honorific and non-honorific use.
Re registration means borrowing of registration or borrowing of some profoma. In our everyday life, we try to borrow some profoma like while writing legal document we try to borrow some standards, and to write scholarly article again we try to borrow some other standards.
Thus, to say that, we have optimized on the definition of stylistics, made a good overview on related terminologies, had a beautiful analysis of the historical reasoning, and trying to make a foray by making study on the register.
The next task is to analyze the systemic functional aspect, the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic behavior of stylistics analysis, its aim and scope.
And before concluding would let us try to assess some modern aspects of investigation into stylistics, a brief case study on Bengali language and future prospect.

Aspects of Systemic Functional Grammar

Systemic Functional(SF) Grammar tries to feel that language semiotics, which a resource person uses to accomplish the meaning in the context.
To put it in the words of Halliday, this can be said, “The value of a theory lies in the use that can be made of it, and I have always considered a theory of language to be essentially consumer oriented" (1985a, p. 7).
According to SF grammar, language is the study of meaning in context and how people interchange those contextual meanings. It says language must be present in some context
or other, according to its use. The prime point made by this view is that meaning is used in context and the purpose of language is to express those meanings.
Here, language is viewed as a systematic resource, which is not a structure and as language is viewed as a semiotic principle, the language is viewed as a description of choice. The linguists of this domain analyze the use of language in various strata, like, semantic, lexicogrammar and phonological, which people uses according to various applications, which they call “strata”.
The linguistic elements occurring here are considered natural as, the basic element is within lexicogrammar, which combines syntax, morphology and lexicon. Halliday believes these three components must be combined into one, and thus tries to feel, “grammar cannot be modeled as new sentences made out of old words a fixed stock of vocabulary in never to be repeated combination" (Halliday, 1985b, p. 8).

The SF school of linguists believe in the text observation as these can be divided into some smaller segments, and the variation is observed through register, which varies through three parameters named field, tenor and mode. The SF linguists also talks about language acquisition but as it is beyond scope so it is not being discussed.
An important treatise of SF school is the study of critical discourse analysis(CDA). Norman Fairclough(1992) discussed about critical discourse analysis and here, he described three parameters namely, description, interpretation and explanation. Description is the systematic description of linguistic features in text, interpretation is the relation between text and interaction and context means the wider interaction of social and cultural contexts. Here, the interpretation is divided into casual cognitive and socio cognitive process and explanation is taken as a sociocultural analysis.

Aspects of Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language is used in society according to its varied social norms, contexts, expectations and contexts, etc., this is in sharp variation from sociology of language which studies the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics also tries to capture the knowledge of how language differs in various groups through various variables like age, gender, religion, caste, etc. and how these classes cater to the adherence of various social and socio-economic parameters.

Sociolinguistics is a widely studied branch in India, Japan, United States of America and United Kingdom, and William Labov, MAK Halliday and Basil Bernstein are some of the principal exponents.

In the traditional method, sociolinguistics is studied through data collection by interview. In the interview, interviewer asks the informant a set of questions, from where he tries to
guess the grasp of the knowledge of language of the informant based on various sets of questions from formal to casual.

In the modern approach, it has been observed that, sociolinguistics, is dependent upon various parameters like, Speech Community, Prestige, Social network, internal and external variety of language, class aspiration and sociolinguistic variables.

Speech community means a discrete group of people who use language in a mutually intelligible way. It may involve the use of jargon and slang, too.

Prestige is the level of respect assigned to one language and dialect in a particular society. Prestige is divided into three forms, namely, high prestige, low prestige and covert prestige.

Social network tries to study the network of community in which a language is used in society and how it is used.

It has been observed that different classes people use different kinds of language and the parameters for them may differ, as language of the lower class differs from language of the upper class for various socio economic reasons, and Labov observed that aspirations of a class is reflected in language.

The use of language in a society is dependent on various social parameters like, gender, age, sex, religion, etc. which are called social variables.

Sociolinguists thus try to determine how one set of language would be used in a particular community, and on application whether it would be used for which kind of business, and all.

Aspects of Psycholinguistics

The psychological or neurobiological factors which affect the use of language is studied in psycholinguistics. In today’s field, modern researchers use biology, statistics, high end computer science, physics, mathematics, to understand what goes in brain to produce language.
Psycholinguistics tries to cover how language variables like speech, grammar, writing tries to behave when different mental morphs affect the use of language.
Psycholinguistics tries to study phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics but with a psycholinguistic interpretation.
Jean Piaget, Rudolph Carnap, B.F.Skinner, Noam Chomsky are some of the important theoreticians of psycholinguistics.

Max Planck Institute(MPI), an important organization in the field, tries to investigate some important aspect of psycholinguistics, in five principal domains, namely, the lexical
processing in monolingual and bilingual settings, where it is studied how the meaning of words is accessed and interpreted in context in monolingual text and the bilingual studies
try to clarify the use of word recognition in isolation and in context. The second aspect focuses on the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors of pre processing and interaction in the monolingual texts. The third aspect studies disorders are aphasia and dyslexia in language comprehension and production. The fourth aspect studies issues like language production and reproduction time, etc. and fifthly it studies the cognitive aspects like the use of language by artificial means as done in robots, etc.

Harris(1997) tried to point out about Semantic Priming, Sophisticated Guessing, accidental neighbors, superiority in collocation pattern, common saying, grammatically legal, neutral prime as the basis for textual analysis from a psycholinguistic view. He discusses how word combination and letter combinations can be chosen. Author or speaker may be choosing one set of words for collocation from same phonetic pattern of words.

Li(1996) tried to propose the problem of structural disambiguation in syntactic parsing with the help of psycholinguistic principle of lexical preference rule(LRP) and right association principle(RAP) and attach low and attach parallel principles(ALPP).(OK).

Some Approaches for Research

Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), China’s Rhetoric Association, Rhetoric Society of America, The Association for Linguistic Evidence, China Stylistics Association, Belgian Netherlands Cognitive Linguistics Association(BeNeCLA) are some of the primary organizations working for the investigation and advancement of stylistics.

Arai(2007) worked on the aspect of analysis of advertising language through relevance and persuasiveness approach of the relevance theory, who had tried to define this widely used theory, and used in the field of advertisement styles of headlines and body. It also tries to stress the focus on the notion of mental profit from reader’s viewpoint. It comes as a very important work of advertisement of our time.

Koguci(2007) tried to investigate in a detailed fashion the use of repetition in the interpretation of the “A Tale of Two Cities” the novel of Charles Dickens. In his work, he tried to show the application of the theory of repetition. (Leech and Short, 1981). This work claims its uniqueness in the accuracy of analysis.

Panagiotidou(2010) tried to work on Cognitive Model and Lexical Concepts Theory or LCCM Theory of Evans(2006, 2007, 2009). She tried to show the intertextual frames for the intertextual links, with the explanation how they are created and interrelated. It is an important work from the point of cognitive modeling of texts and its interpretation.

Some Examples from Bengali language

Let us now investigate few examples in Bengali.

1. a. Amra pujote dhuti pAnjAbi porbo.(Bengali)
We festival-in dhoti pAnjAbi shall wear (Gloss).
We shall wear hoti punjAbi in festival. (Meaning).
b. AmrA pujote sAri bA sAlwAr kAmij porbo. (Bengali)
We festival at sAri or salwar kamij wear-shall. (Gloss).
We shall wear sari or salwar kamij in festival. (Meaning).

2. a. AmrA pujote khub khAoA dAoA kori.(Bengali)
We festival-in very eat-drink do. (Gloss).
We do lot of eat and drink in the festival (Meaning).

b. AmrA barodine khub khAoA dAoA kori. (Bengali).
We Christmas very eat-drink did. (Gloss).
We do lot of eat and drink in the festival. (Meaning).

3. a. srAbaN mAser sakalbelAy megh kATiyA giyA nirmal roudre kolikAtAr (Bengali)
Sraban month-of morning cloud clear do pure sun-of Calcutta-of (Gloss)
In the morning of Sraban month cloud has been clear and Calcutta’s (Meaning)
AkAs bhoriyA giyAche. rAstAy gARi ghorAr birAm nAi, pheriwAlA abisrAm (Bengali)
Sky fulfill with, road-at car horse-of endless none, hawker endless (Gloss)
Sky fulfills with beautiful sun shine. There is no end to traffic in the road, (Meaning)
hnAkiyA coliyAche, jAhArA Apise kAleje AdAlate jAibe tAhAder jonno (Bengali)
shout going on, whoever office-at college-at court at will go them-of for (Gloss).
Hawker has been shouting constantly, the people who would go to the office (Meaning)
bAsAi bAsAi mAch tarkArir cupRi AsiyAche o rAnnAghare unAn jAlAibAr (Bengali)
home-at home-at fish vegetables box came and kitchen-at oven for burning (Gloss)
for them boxes of fishes and vegetables came and the kitchen oven is burning (Meaning)
kintu tabu eto baro ei je kAjer sahar kaThin hriday kolikAtA, ihAr sata sata rAstA (Bengali)
but then this big this that work-of city hard heart kolikAtA, this hundred hundred (Gloss)
Even in this hard hitting town of Calcutta, in this town in the hundreds of the streets (Meaning)
ebong galir bhitore sonar Aloker dhArA Aj jeno ekTA apar jouboner prabAho (Bengali)
road and lane-of within beautiful light-of today as-if one endless youth-of flow (Gloss)
bohiyA loiyA coliyAche. (Bengali). (Rabindranath Tagore, Gora).
Flowing with going. (Gloss).
This flow of light is going on. (Meaning).

4.
a. se anek diner kathA-rangpur jilAr antargata pAyrAband nAmak grAmer jamidAr bARite belA (Bengali)
That long time-of tale rangpur district internal payarband named village-of landlord houseat noon (Gloss)
It was long time back, in the house of landlord of Payraband in Rangpur district at (Meaning)
andAj 1TA-2tAr samay jomIdAr konnAgon johorer nAmAj poRibAr jonno oju ses hoiyAche kebal (Bengali)
around 1pm-2pm-of time landlord daughters jahar-of prayer to read for oju finish did only (Gloss)
around 1pm-2pm of time daughters of landlord were doing oju for namaz. Every one has finished only (Meaning)
“A” khAtun nAmni sAhebjAdI takhonoo AnginAy oju koritechilen. AltAr mA badnA hAte tnAhAke ojur(Bengali)
“A” khatun named princess then also at parlour oju doing, Alta-of mother Badna hand-on her(Gloss)
pAni dhAliyA ditechilo(Bengali) (Begum Rokeya Sakhwat Hossain, Aborodh Basini)
princess named “A” khatun had to finish. Alta’s mother Badna was pouring water on her hand(Meaning).
water pour was (Gloss).

b. ghanTA pAnc chay dhore gARir anek tel puRiye, saharer ei pujor marsume, (Bengali)
hour five six with car-of many oil burningwith, city-of this festival occasion-in(Gloss)
in this festive season, burning lot of fuel for five or six hours(Meaning)
afuranta saundrajomoyi sARir bAjArti prAy chose phele, sarbAni jakhon tAr(Bengali)
endless beautiful garment-of market-the survey did, sarbani when her(Gloss)
after surveying the beautiful garment market, when Sarbani(Meaning)
sARibhorA bAksoder gARite tuliye nijeo gARite uthe guchiye boslo, takhon tAr(Bengali)
sAri-full box-of car-at with herself car-at got-up arrange sat, when her(Gloss)
got up and sat in the car with the boxes full of Sari(Meaning)
mukhe cokhe je bijay gourober Anando jhilik tAr tulonA dite hole bola hoy prAy(Bengali)
mouth-in eye-in that victory pride-of joy spark her compare with had saying has near(Gloss)
in her face and eyes the pride and joy of victory was sparking comparable to the(Meaning)
sAgar chence mAnik tule AnAr tullyo.(Bengali) (Asapurna Devi, Sapno Athoba)
sea pick pearl pick bring compare.(Gloss)
pearl picked up from the sea. (Meaning).

Preliminary Analysis from Stylistics Analysis view point

Few set of sentences are looked into here. The first two sets are common sets of conversation in Bengali. The other two sets are excerpts from literary works of Bengali.

The observation of the first two sets quite minutely, shows us that their syntactical structures are almost same but some lexical entities are changing.
In the first set, it is being studied that the first sentence is used by the male members and second sentence by the female members of the society, and is determined by the category of the cloth items.
In the second set, it is being seen the same presumption about the sentences, as we can say the structure is almost same but the first set of sentence is perhaps used by the people religion while the second one by the people of Christian religion as determined by the name of their festivals.

In the third set, it is being seen as one piece from Rabindranath Tagore. Now, if we compare this piece with the set of the conversation. The syntactic as well as the lexical orders are clearly making differences.

In the fourth set, it is being seen the case of two female writers. In the first look you can observe that one writer is possibly a Hindu lady while the other one is Muslim. It comes from lexical choices.

Now, another level of comparison is being checked. If we go for the comparison of all the four sets. Here, it is being said that every group has its own distinctiveness. It is both lexical and syntactic.

The observation can go for many level, like we can compare all the female writers, all female Muslim writers, all female Hindu writers, all writers of the children literature, we can again divide them by their age, profession, etc. There can be lot of variables and with all variables we are getting lot of parameters and look for distinction.

The parameters can give us lot of interesting news, and the recent news tells that style investigation can be treated with the higher end statistics, and machine learning and information can be retrieved from the style of a corpus that who has authored the document. This work has been popular as Author Identification, and a special interest group of Association of Computer Machineries(ACM), has been working for quite some time on that.

Conclusion

In this study, it is being investigated in detail about what is stylistics, its rich tradition, its scope of study, its tradition in India as well as abroad, the current trends of research and the problems in Bengali.
It may thus be said that a detailed work on Stylistics Analysis or Author Identification in Bengali language will not be totally unfounded and can be taken up as a serious effort.

Reference

1. Arai, K.(2007) : Relevance and Persuasiveness An Analysis of Advertising Language.
Poetics and Linguistics Association(PALA) Conference, Osaka, Japan.

2. Article World(2010) : Register Rertrieved from http://www.articleworld.org/index.php/Register_%28linguistics%29 on 23rd November,2010

3. Barthes, R. (1967): Elements of Semiology. Jonathan Cape: London.

4. Britannica Online_Stylistics (2010) : Stylistics retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/570324/stylistics on 23rd November, 2010.

5. Downes,W.(1998): Language and Society, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

6. Evans, V. (2006) Lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning-construction, Cognitive Linguistics,17(4), 491-534.

7.Evans, V. (2007) Towards a cognitive compositional semantics: An overview of LCCM Theory’, in U. Magnusson, H. Kardela & A. Glaz (Eds.), Further Insights into Semantics and Lexicography, pp. 11-42. Lublin: Further Insights into Semantics and Lexicography.

8. Evans, V. (2009): LCCM Theory: Asssumptions, antecedents and architecture, in V. Evans & S.Pourcel (Eds.), New directions in cognitive linguistics, pp. 27-55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

9. Fowler,R.(1996) : Linguistic Criticism, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
(1995): The Language of George Orwell (London: Macmillan Press)

10. Gargesh, R.(2008) : Stylistics and Stylistics Analysis of Hindi Poem retrieved from http://user.chollian.net/~indology/data/12-1-08.pdf on 21st November, 2010.

11. Gregory, M. (1967) : Aspects of Varieties Differentiation, Journal of Linguistics 3: 177-197.

12.Halliday, M. A. K. (1985a). Systemic background. In J. D. Benson, & W. S. Greaves, Eds. Systemic Perspectives on Discourse, Volume 1. Selected Theoretical Papers from the 9th International Systemic Workshop (pp. 1 15). Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood, NJ.

13. Halliday, M. A. K. (1985b). An introduction to functional grammar. Edward Arnold:London

14.Harris.C.(1997) : Psycholinguistic Studies of Entrenchment Retrieved from http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Jyib4FdvhNIJ:citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.85.3838%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf+Psycholinguistic+Studies+to+entrenchment&hl=en&gl=in&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjUXBfly30aeimq-08OTnPHN9IObTpbn8GT3L_oO6Syr6hqM2waqQHIr-ac-ta5_rXCCw-3PC4i6t_UK9ib4E__mqKqv5J2D1birYyp_S0_rIakC00r3_RtvYPtxAa7CfSYpbay&sig=AHIEtbQjMXt1KNSFm3dB4nIWw5hqSyod6A on 23rd November,2010.

15. Joos, M. (1961) : The Five Clocks, Harcourt, Brace and World: New York.

16. Max Planck Institute(2010): Max Planck Institute Annual Report retrieved from http://www.nici.kun.nl/Divisions/d1/Psycholinguistics.pdf on 23rd November,2010.

17.Koguci, K.(2007): Stylistic Use of Repetition in A Tale of Two Cities. Poetics and Linguistics Association(PALA) Conference, Osaka, Japan.

18. Li,H.(1996): A Probabilistic Disambiguaton Method Based on Psycholinguistic Methods Retrieved from http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/W/W96/W96-0112.pdf on 23rd November,2010.

19. Leech, G. N. and Short, M. H. (1981) Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose, Longman, London.

20. PALA notes(2010) : PALA notes on stylistics retrieved from http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/contents.htm on 20th November,2010

21. Panagiotidou,M.E.(2010): Mapping Intertextuality: Towards A Cognitive Model. Poetics and Linguistics Association(PALA) Conference on The Language of Landscapes,
Genoa, Italy.

22.Trudgill, P. (1992): Introducing language and society, London: Penguin.
Wikipedia_Psycholinguistics(2010): Psycholinguistics Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics on 23rd November,2010.

23. Wardhaugh, R. (1986): Introduction to Sociolinguistics, (2nd ed.), Blackwell, Cambridge.

24.Wikipedia_Register(2010): Register Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28sociolinguistics%29 on 23rd November,2010.

25. Wikipedia_Sociolinguistics (2010): Sociolinguistics. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolinguistics on 23rd November,2010.

26.Wikipedia_Sociolinguistics_Research_in_India (2010) : Sociolinguistics Research in India retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociolinguistics_research_in_India on 20th November, 2010

27. Wikipedia_Stylistics (2010) : Stylistics retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylistics_%28literature%29 on 23rd November, 2010.

Some articles are referred but are not referenced. As I have read them I felt to include them.

INDIAN LINGUISTICS

Friday, December 17, 2010

NEW PAPER ON STYLISTICS COMMUNICATED TO JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

INFORMATION ON LINGUISTICS IN INDIA

ABOUT ME

Followers

Blog Archive

About Me