The word style is derived from the Latin word “Stylus” meaning "Reed". Reed is a stick for writing. Later Stylus metamorphosed into style. The word style can be given different meaning and as such it is difficult to give a clear-cut monothlic definition of style but what we should know is that stylistics as a discipline originates from two separate and inter-related discipline and these disciplines are linguistics and literary criticism.

The literary scholars and linguists have accepted stylistics to be a worthwhile discipline. In view of this, one can rightly say that stylistics had secured a place for itself in the field of literature and language irrespective of the divers opinions express of scholars.

As far as definition is concerned, critics and linguists have held divergent views and opinions about its definition. Some of these scholars believe that stylistics has a system and method which could be used to define the specific characteristics of literary words. Some lay emphasis on its methodological approaches. Therefore, among modern scholars there is no agreement at all as to how to define the word style and stylistics. They all presume that they know where style is and they are all engaged in finding a scientific formular to locate it.

However, inspite of these differences in opinion, linguistics has not totally failed in giving all the framework with which to work in stylistics. It should then be noted that the domain for the study of style is known as stylistics.

Chatman defines style as the manner in which form is executed or the means in which the context is expressed”.

Style can be used in either a technical or a non-technical sense. There is style in everything human beings do. Style in linguistics is applied to both written or spoken language. There are psycho-linguist who believes that our speech helps to identify our social background, sex and nationalities within the society. The inadequacy of this approach lies in the fact that some people use of language may not reveal their cultural identity.

Buffoon gives another notion of style, he believes that style is the man. The sociological analysts believe that a man is a product of the society and whatever he writes must reflect his socio-political experience. From this argument, the man himself is referred to as style. It is claimed that, it is a difficult to divorce matter from manner, that is, no distinction can be made between what a writer writes and the way he writes it. A man's writing will definitely reveal his background. This definition is defective in a way, some writer's identities may not reflect in their writings.

Osgood defines style as norm and deviation. A norm is the common practice or acceptable usage in language. It is what is permissible within the rules governing the use of language. For instance all human normal human beings have two legs each. It is the norm and anything contrary to this is a deviation.

Deviation is a departure from general order. It is the deliberate violation of the norms.

Every use of figure of speech could be seen as deviation. Example there is deviation in the sentence:

Colourless green idea sleeps furiously. Following Chomsky's selectional creterion, the word "sleep" is deviant and ungrammatical in the above sentence because it selects an inanimate subject. Moreover ideas have no colour. The contradiction usage - colourless - green is also a deviation. The sentence is grammatical and it violates the rule of choice. The problem with this definition is that it is difficult to decide what is the norm. Is it the ordinary or the elevated usage? Another weakness is that not all text are all literary deviant. There are some poems which cannot be said to be deviant.

Generally, however stylistics could be regarded as the domain for the study of text or discourse. There are two ways of looking at style and stylistics. They could be used in relation to analysis of literary text and this gives us what is known as linguistics stylistics and it has its own peculiar analytical procedures. Therefore, linguistics stylistics could be simply defined as the application of stylistics through the linguistics frames to the analysis of literary text.

Stylistics in the words of Widdowson (1975) “is the study of literary discourse form a linguistics orientation” stylistics, consequently involves with literary criticism and linguistics. Depending on which angle it is viewed from, the choice of words varies; some say relationship between message and medium, content and form, matter and manner, what and how etc. in any case, both the content and form have some stylistics significance.

Secondly, there is the style of stylistics in relation to peculiar use of language and the analytical procedure here leads us to what is popular known as language varieties in a circle of language experts.

Principles of Stylistics

There are three major principles of stylistics they are: foregrounding, Norm and Deviation. We shall begin to explain them one after the other.

FOREGROUNDING

This term was first used by a man called Jan Mulcanovsky. By the way, foregrounding refers to the factors of deviating from linguistic and literary norms. Deviation itself is a de-automatisation of familiar linguistic and literary pattern. It means there are certain words we use everyday as if automatic. Foregrounding will then do reversal i.e. de-automatise such automatic words, e.g. University students are unbeautiful.

Again foregrounding is used to thematise certain words or linguistic item. In this case, a structure or words foregrounded acquire prominence or significance in a text as a result of making use of certain aspect of the language. Thus, if a writer or a speaker frequently uses adjectives that indicate or suggest vibrancy, and analyst would see this as an attempt to mimic or ape a particular situation being described or presented. In similar manner, the prepondance of lexical item may be deployed to paint an atmosphere of serenity or calmness. In the same vein, sounds can be repeatedly use for the same purpose.

It should be noted that there are two forms of foregrounding. They are:

1. Deviational foregrounding
2. Non-deviational foregrounding

The non-deviational type of foregrounding is a structure that acquires a prominent significance in a text as a result of making use of certain aspect of language. Example is such a systematic repeated/or prepondent manner that attracts the attention of a reader; Dr Fatunsi is a lion-hearted chief, Dr Fatunsi is a dogged fighter who never discourages until victory is attempted, Dr. Fatunsi ……, Dr Fatunsi ….., whereas, the deviational type draws its own attraction if the readers attention is drawn by a way of violating the rules and norms of the pattern.

In foregrounding there is also what is called prominence. Michael Halliday observes that foregrounding is prominence, that is motivated. So we can have motivated and unmotivated prominence. It is the motivated prominence that goes with foregrounding. If a linguistic item is motivated we say it is significant for meaning and if not, it is not significant for meaning. Therefore, before a particular item/unit can be considered as foregrounding, it needs to be firstly analysed so as to find out the norms in order to discover a prominence or foregrounded structure. Lexical items can only be foregrounded.

Norms

Norm is an established pattern within a text. The norm of language as a whole is solely concerned with linguistic levels of language, such as the grammar, phonology, lexical structure and graphology.

There are different types of norms. They are: General norm, authorian norm and lexical norm.

1. General norm:

    This means in effect when writing we must observe the norms that relate to that type of text. If you are writing a poem, certain norms must be observed e.g. using verses, starting each line with capital letter, rhyming pattern especially in conventional writing. The Sonnets has a norm that it has to be fourteen lines divided into octave and sestet. In drama, we have characters engaging in dialogue, the dialogue may be spoken or unspoken.

2. Authorian norm:

   This is the norm the author has created by himself. Example is E. E. Cummings does not use capital letter at all and he does not use punctuation marks. George Benard Shaw has his own norms and one of such is his lengthy stage directions which can go into stages before the real action.

3. Lexical norm:

   This is a situation where a writer creates a norm for himself in a particular work. It is almost the same as authorial norm. The has to do with/way the writer uses words.

Deviation

Deviation is the breaking of rules which others obey. Poetry as a genre is a deviation from the ordinary language, though, despite the poetic deviation, poetry skill has its own rules and norms which separate it from ordinary language and therefore creates its own pattern. In literary circle, deviation is taken as poetic license or writer's license and it should be noted that deviation could occur at various linguistic level. We can have grammatical lexical, phonological, semantic and textual deviation.

At the graphological deviational level, we focus on the breaking of rules relating to punctuation marks on starting a proper name with a small letter e.g. E.E. Cumming's work:

"spoke joe to jack
leave her alone
she is not your gal"

At the level of phonology, deviation can also occur when you use the sound patterns of language which deviate from the ordinary language sound patterns. It may be to attract attention e.g. instead of girl, you say gal.

Rhymy scheme can also be a form of deviation from the ordinary language e.g. Rime of the ancient manner” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Lexical deviation - At the lexical level, deviation occur when a word is over-use in a line or when there is collocation clash or when a strange lexical item is brought in. for example, the item or lexical item such as "allow" "pirate" are peculiar to a particular setting and are used in deviation to the normal use of the word.

Deviation can be in form of introduction of new words into the language e.g.

"If you like her so much why don"t you “kuku” marry him', "se you hear her".

What happen here is called macaronism which means put in more than one language.

The deviation could be grammatical i.e. deviating from the rule of the grammar of a language e.g. instead of saying

"Mad don" you say "Don mad". This is for the purpose of the matisation. This grammatical deviation is also called syntactic deviation.

Semantic deviation operates at the level of meaning e.g. "Three hearty cheers to our eighty year Abiku". The deviation here is semantic because an Abiku is not supposed to live that long (80 years).

We also have dialectal deviation e.g. if you put the dialect of Akure into the mouth of an Hausa, then there is a dialectual deviation. Some people can not articulate well such speech sounds as /S/ /tS/. This is provincial.