This tension, Spitzer's and Bally's position as Continental rather than Anglo-American linguists, and the popularity of Practical Criticism and New Criticism in England and the United States all lay behind the relative lack of an organized, Anglo-American literary stylistics during the first half of the twentieth century. Literary stylistic analyses were occurring in England and in the United States at this time, but they often did not contain the formal linguistic orientation that characterizes the modern discipline of stylistics. Instead, they drew support and procedures from the basic but less analytically structured orientation of New Criticism and practical criticism. And while the influence of Romance language study grew during the mid-twentieth century (due in no small part to the presence in England and in the United States of many expatriated scholars), the established strength of other, more empirical linguistic methodologies reduced possible exchanges between linguistics and literary criticism.
The eventual appearance of modern stylistics in Anglo-American work repeated the earlier Continental process, appearing most clearly when united with an interest in linguistic analysis at mid-century and with the related interest in literary Structuralism somewhat later. By the late 1950s, the general critical ambience provided by the rise and fall of New Criticism and practical criticism, in combination with a growing interest in comparative literary studies and a new awareness of the increasing importance of linguistic science, provided the needed impetus for a strong appearance of literary stylistics outside the European continent. The processes behind the formation of American stylistics are exemplified by work done by Michael Riffaterre on Romance languages. Riffaterre's published dissertation, Le Style des Plйiades de Gobineau (1957), is a self-described attempt to blend Spitzer's work with that of contemporary structural linguistics, while the later, even more formal stylistic methodology set forth in "Criteria for Style Analysis" (1959) and "Stylistic Context" (1960) shifts away from interpretive description and toward the general linguistic analysis that was beginning to dominate academic study Le Style des Plйiades de Gobineau (1957), "Criteria for Style Analysis" (1959) "Stylistic Context" (1960). .
Such work in stylistics reflected a larger trend occurring within literary criticism as a whole during this period. Riffaterre's particular interest in a systematic, formal description of literary style mirrored a growing awareness among literary critics in general of the possibilities provided to literary study by trends and theories available from formal linguistic study. The discovery of linguistic work Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson by Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, and structural linguistic theory in general all formed part of the rapid flowering of critical work closely related to, if not directly based upon, particular methods of linguistic analysis. It was not a link between literary stylistics and structural linguistic analysis that marked the real establishment of stylistics as a discipline within the United States, however. It was the transformational-generative grammar of Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky Syntactic Structures, 1957 that signaled the arrival of stylistics as a discipline with independent, self-defined goals, if not yet a real autonomy from either linguistic or literary-critical approaches to language analysis. The rapidly established importance of Chomsky's linguistics within his own discipline provided a strong argument for the importance of transformational-generative grammar within literary stylistics as well. But beneath that academic, institutional cause lay particular features of the theory that explain further the explosion of stylistic work using transformational-generative grammar. The grammar's focus on syntax, its distinction between deep and surface structures, and the resulting dynamism in its descriptive procedures all contributed to a methodology that allowed for a much wider discussion of the possible forms (and by implication styles) available to the user of language. At the same time, the declared mentalism of Chomsky's grammar was seen by many as providing literary stylistics with a means of uniting a still lingering Romantic sense of creativity with the formal linguistic description needed to provide the analysis with a now-requisite air of scientific study. Many critics found not only an implied linkage between language and mind within Chomsky's grammar but an actual justification for tying intention to structure. Whichever aspect of Chomsky's grammar provided the impetus for a particular study, the general influence was huge, and the numerous studies that appeared during the years 1965-75 testify to the boost that Chomsky's thinking on language gave to the era, one of the most hectic and dramatic in the formation and growth of stylistics.
BASIC PROSE STYLE
1. Write in the Active Voice
Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, always choose the active, rather than the passive, voice. With the active voice, the agent (the person or thing carrying out the action expressed by the verb) is the subject:
John opened the door.
There are two types of passive voice constructions. In one, the agent is identified, but the person or thing toward which the action is directed (rather than the agent) is the subject of the sentence:
The door was opened by John.
In the second type of passive voice construction, the agent is not identified at all:
The door was opened.
(Note: The verb "to be" [am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been] often flags the passive voice.)
In addition to being less natural, less direct, and less vigorous, sentences that fail to identify an agent can raise ethical questions, since they fail to attribute responsibility for the action they express. The passive voice can, however, be an effective means of doing at least three things:
a. Focusing attention on the thing acted upon:
The bus was destroyed by a freight train.
b. Describing action when the agent is unknown or unimportant:
The building was demolished over fifteen years ago.
c. Placing the agent at the end of a clause where he, she, or it can more easily be modified by a long modifier:
The house was built by John Hanson, who went on, years later, to become president of the Continental Congress.
Many science and technical writers once considered passive voice more objective than active voice and, hence, more appropriate to their writing. As the quotations below suggest, however, the traditional preference for passive voice in scientific and technical writing is changing:
We cannot object to this use of the passive construction in itself. We can object to its abuse--to use almost to the exclusion of all other constructions. When the passive is used as a rule, not as an exception to obtain a particular effect, writing soon begins to seem forced and uncomfortable.
-- John Kirkman, Good Style: Writing for Science and Technology
The active is the natural voice, the one in which people usually speak or write, and its use is less likely to lead to wordiness or ambiguity. The passive of modesty, a device of writers who shun the first-person singular, should be avoided. I discovered is shorter and less likely to be ambiguous than it was discovered. The use of I or we. . .avoids dangling participles, common in sentences written in the third-person passive.
-- Council of Biology Editors, CBE Style Manual, 5th ed.
[Passive voice] implies that events take place without any one doing anything. Moves files, desks, and ideas without any assistance from a human being. Makes readers wonder whether they should be doing something or just sitting there waiting for the system to perform. It turns actions into states of being. It's somewhat mystical, but tends to put readers to sleep. . . .
To get more active, say who does what. Assign responsibility to the system or to the program or, if necessary, to the reader. If you have to tell readers to do something, don't pussyfoot around--tell them. (Are you slipping into the passive because you don't dare to order readers around?)
-- Jonathan Price, How to Write a Computer Manual
2. Avoid Nominalizations
Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, avoid nominalizations. A nominalization is a noun derived from and communicating the same meaning as a verb or adjective. It is usually more direct, vigorous and natural to express action in verbs and qualities in adjectives.
no: Our expectation was that we would be rewarded for our efforts.
yes: We expected to be rewarded for our efforts.
no: There was a stuffiness about the room.
yes: The room was stuffy.
Nominalizations frequently crop up in noun strings. A noun string, a series of nouns that modify one another, is often concise but ambiguous. If the noun string is short, it can usually be tamed with a few judicious hyphens:
no: The test area probes were delivered last week.
yes: The test-area probes were delivered last week.
Longer noun strings, however, are often confusing, and it is generally best to unstring them by converting nominalizations back to verbs or by adding a few strategic articles and prepositions:
no: Missile guidance center office equipment maintenance is performed weekly.
yes: The office equipment in the missile guidance center is maintained weekly.
Like passive voice, nominalizations can serve some useful purposes:
a. Nominalizations can facilitate smooth transitions between sentences by serving as subjects that refer back to ideas in previous sentences:
Susan refused to accept the five-stroke handicap. Ultimately, this refusal cost her the match.
b. Nominalizations can be effective when you choose to desensitize a statement by converting the more vigorous and direct verb form into the less vigorous and direct noun form. Thus,
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