Explaining style growth and change

a Richer semiotic model

pp. 185-194

in: Michael Herzfeld, Margot D. Lenhart, Semiotics 1980, Berlin, Springer, 1982

Abstract

For the past four years I have been working with a concept of style as competency, in the sense of its use by Chomsky (1965) in linguistics and Jonathan Culler (1975) in his Structuralist Poetics. It is the "code" of Jakob-son's (1960) semiotic poetics, with emphasis on its usability, its functionality as the shared "language" between sender and receiver, between composer and educated listener. Style as competency differs from the literary critic's varied usage of style as either the sum of distinctive traits or as deviance from a norm. The literary critic tends to view style as a part of works, whereas for a style theorist, the "code" and the "message", in Jakobson's terms, are distinct theoretical categories.