Stylistic meaning in Semantics
What is Stylistic Meaning?
Hockett defines style beautifully saying, two utterances in the same language which convey approximately the same meaning but which are different in their linguistic structure can be said to differ in style.
In every language there are the examples of style and the stylistic meaning. In English, for example, a particular idea can be expressed by using different linguistic structures (words, phrases, sentences etc.), thus creating stylistic meaning.
Stylistic meaning example
For example, ‘she died’, she expired, ‘she left for her heavenly aboard’ - in these three sentences the same meaning has been expressed in different styles. Similarity certain words have their stylistic meaning like ‘home’. Here home, house or the residence has the same meaning.Stylistic meaning explain
In linguistics communication, the context of situation in which language is used performs a crucial role. That is something is of course, communicated of the social circumstances of language use.What is communicated is termed “Stylistic meaning”. Some words, accents or structures indicate something of the geographical stylistic origin of the speaker. The other characteristics of the language reveal the social relationship between the speaker and the listener. There is scale of status usage.
For example descending from formal and literary English at one end to familiar, colloquial and eventually slang English at the other.
Crystal and Davy have recognised several dimensions of stylistic variation. Dialect time, province, status, singularity and modality. Though this list is not exhaustive, it suggests something of the range of style differentiation possible within a single language.
Moreover, stylistic meaning can encompass what Austin labels the “illocutionary force” of an utterance.
For example, whether it so to be interpreted as an act of advice, a request, an assertion, a threat, an apology, and the like. The function that an utterance performs in this respect may be only indirectly related to its conceptual meaning.
The sentence “He hasn't got a Dagger” has the form and meaning of an assertion, and yet the stylistic reality it can readily take on the force of a request, such as “Please bring him a Dagger”.
