Stylistics Reloaded: Tradition and Prospects of an Impure Discipline

Who is Stylistics ? » famously queried Mick Short in the first and introductory chapter of his now canonical Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose (1996). Thus foregrounding his own subject matter, Short primed his readers for stylistic practice by way of a blatant example of deviation in speech. Of course, who is an unsuitable pronoun for Stylistics, because Stylistics is clearly an abstract noun. But then again, this is precisely the stuff Stylistics is made of : the abstract, personified, leaps out at the readers, causes them to pause, to examine their perplexities and expectations, and so sets in train an act of interpretation. Deviation and foregrounding, indeed, are prime subject matter for stylisticians, whose work moves from the premise that deviations from the norm (from any kind of norm) are in fact a standard in verbal communication, whether spoken or written. Does Stylistics today have the same aims and targets as it did, say, in 1996 ? What else might studies in style be concerned with today ? What is the current consensus among scholars ? And where does Stylistics fit into the general domain of studies on language ? The aim of the article is to answer those questions and describe the historical development of Stylistics and highlight the current state of the discipline.