STYLISTICAND LINGUISTIC ANALYSES OF LITERARY WORKS<br />INTRODUCTION<br />The linguistic study of literature has for long become a source of debate among linguists on the one hand and between linguists and literary scholars on the other. Some linguists hold that the language of literature —especially the language of poetry or poetic language— is special, for it is different from non-literary or daily used language. Some other linguists object to the opinion and argue that the language of literature is not to be distinguished from the language of non-literary texts. Another argument concerning linguistic analysis of literature arises between linguists and literary scholars.<br />LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS:<br />The Phono-Graphological Level<br />The Systemic Functional Grammar developed by M.A.K. Halliday recognizes phonology and graphology as the levels of language substance. Phonology deals with the phonic substance (segmental and supra segmental units of language) while graphology deals with the graphic substance. <br />Phono-graphology as a term was popularized by Hallidayin explicating a number of different levels at which linguistic events should be accounted for. Within this framework, Halliday observes that the primary levels are ‘form’, ‘substance’ and ‘context’. According to him, the substance is the material of language: ‘phonic’ (audible noises) or ‘graphic’ (visible marks), hence phono-graphology is the organization of substance into meaningful events. The context relates the form to nonlinguistic features of the situation in which language operates to yield extra-textual features. Therefore, Systemic Functional Linguistics recognizes the formal and the situational dimensions of language description.<br />At graphological level, such things as spelling, punctuation, space management, underlining, use of pictures, coloring, etc. are considered and analyzed. The pattern of writing can also indicate the variety of language involved. For instance, words like ‘color’ and ‘meter’ are classified as American English, based on their spellings. <br />THE LEXICO-SEMANTIC LEVEL:<br />The lexico-semantic level is the level at which a stylistic analyst looks at the author’s deployment of words and their meanings in a text. The study of lexis is the study of the vocabulary of a language in all its aspects. Semantics is the study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases and sentences. Subfields of semantics are lexical semantics and structural semantics. Lexical semantics is concerned with the meaning of words and the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word. Semantics is the philosophical and scientific study of meaning. <br />CONCLUSION<br />In conclusion , we can say that the analysis at the syntactic level calls for a good understanding of the grammatical units of group, clause and sentence and how they function in a text. In other words, the ability to identify the units of grammar is not enough, one should be able to describe the stylistic significance of the units and their contribution to the literary analysis. <br /><br /><br />