What are the linguistic features of literary works?

The linguistic features of literary works actually refer to the genre of literary works. The specific style of literary works refers to the formal categories of various literary works. It is the external expression of the ideological nature of the work and belongs to the formal category of the work. Literary genre is formed by history. In the process of its formation and development, various literary genres have gradually formed their own relatively stable characteristics and laws in terms of expression, image building, structural arrangement and language use, which have become the basis of stylistic classification. The Evolution of Stylistic Classification The stylistic classification in China's history sprouted as early as the Zhou and Qin Dynasties. For example, in the Analects of Confucius, there were already names such as "poem", "book", "poem" and "article", but at that time, literary works were not strictly distinguished from general academic works. In the Han Dynasty, with the development of pure literature such as Ci and Fu, various names such as "Wen" and "Wen" appeared. At that time, the so-called "literature", also known as "erudition", generally refers to academic works such as Confucian classics and history; The so-called "article", also known as "literary expression", refers to poetic works, including poems, ci fu, historical biography, recitation and so on. The appearance of such names means that literary works are beginning to be distinguished from general academic works. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, with the development of literary creation and the increasing diversification of literary genres, the theory of literary classification was gradually formed. Cao Pi's theory that "Fu Wen is the same but different at the end" in Dian Lun Wen can be regarded as the source of stylistic classification. According to this principle, he divided the works that belonged to literature at that time into four branches: recitation, book theory, inscription and postscript, and poetry. Later, Lu Ji of the Western Jin Dynasty put forward the idea of classifying things according to the forms described in literary works. He divided literary works into ten categories: poetry, ode, monument, obituary, inscription, admonition, ode, argument, performance and speech, and made a concise summary of the characteristics of each category. In the Qi and Liang Dynasties, Liu Xie's Wen Xin Diao Long summed up the experience of stylistic classification in previous dynasties and people's views at that time, and put forward the idea of classifying it by "Wen" and "Pen", that is, the so-called "words have a pen, and those who think there is no rhyme write it, and those who have rhyme write it" (Wen Xin Diao Long Tong Ji). This classification focuses on the linguistic characteristics of works, that is, according to the rhyme or non-rhyme of their language, all kinds of works are divided into two categories: verse and prose. This is the dichotomy of China's traditional stylistic classification. It was widely adopted by later generations and became a dominant classification. The Selected Works compiled by Xiao Tong in the Liang Dynasty paid more attention to the boundary between literature and non-literature, and put forward the selection criteria of "things come from Zen, meaning comes from ignorance". He classified "Confucian classics", "sub-books" and historical works as non-literature, and instead of collecting them, he divided the works belonging to literature into 39 orders. This complicated trend of literary classification urges literary critics to comprehensively study and classify many literary variants. After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, novels and traditional opera literature have made great progress, but because they were excluded from literature by traditional literary concepts, they did not cause much change in literary classification. Since the late Qing Dynasty, with the introduction of western modern cultural thoughts, including literary thoughts, foreign novels and dramas have been gradually translated and introduced, and the modern novels and dramas created by China have also attracted people's attention, so there was a tendency to classify novels and dramas as independent literary genres in some literary magazines and works at that time. Around the May 4th Movement, with the rise of the literary revolutionary movement, new poems (free poems), new novels (modern vernacular novels) and new dramas (modern dramas) developed rapidly. China's traditional stylistic classification can no longer explain the different ways and characteristics of increasingly diversified and modern literary styles in expressing ideas and shaping images. As a result, the ancient traditional dichotomy was gradually replaced by the modern classification which absorbed the advantages of western classification. Since the May 4th Movement, the popular classification of modern literature has been divided into three parts and four parts, especially the latter is used by people. The May 4th literary revolution also involves the classification theory of literature. Some pioneers at that time put forward many new ideas in this regard, which laid the foundation for a new literary classification, especially the quartering method. Hu Shi's Humble Opinion on Literary Improvement stands on the standpoint of advocating vernacular literature, and regards the vernacular novels of Cao Xueqin and Wu as authentic literature. Qian Xuantong responded that operas and novels are "the best modern literature". Liu Bannong's "My View of Literary Improvement" puts forward: "Only poetry, drama and novel essays can be regarded as having eternal qualifications and values in literature." He classified poems and operas as rhymes and novels and essays as essays. Although he followed China's traditional dichotomy, it was undoubtedly a breakthrough in traditional literary concepts, which showed that he attached great importance to the position of novels and dramas in literature, just like other pioneers of literary revolution at that time. He also pointed out that it is necessary to "improve the position of traditional Chinese opera in literature" and predicted that "vernacular drama" (modern drama) will have a "prosperous" prospect; And asserted that the novel is "the brain of literature". In fact, poetry, drama literature, novel and prose (in a narrow sense) have been regarded as four relatively independent literary genres. His thought of literary classification was endorsed by Chen Duxiu at that time. After the May 4th Movement, poems, novels, essays and operas (including all drama literature) became the main genres in literary creation and became the literary categories people used to. In 1930s, China's new literature series adopted the four divisions of poetry, novel, prose and drama. Since then, quartering has become a widely used literary classification in China's modern literary publications, literary theories and literary history works. In the history of Europe, from Aristotle in ancient Greece to Hegel in Germany, and then to belinsky in Russia, aestheticians and literary theorists all advocated the three-point method of literature, that is, various literary genres were divided into narrative, lyric and drama according to the different ways of expressing feelings and shaping images. Narrative works mainly describe what is happening in the objective world in the narrator's tone, paying special attention to the description of life events and the characterization of characters. This kind of literary genre includes narrative poems, novels, fables, myths, fairy tales and so on. Lyric works are mainly written by the author in the tone of the protagonist, expressing his inner thoughts and feelings, and generally do not require complete plots and characters. This genre includes lyric poetry, lyric prose and so on. Dramatic works are mainly created by the characters in the works with their own language and actions. It is different from narrative literature and lyric literature and has some characteristics of both. For example, it not only has the complete stories and characters of narrative literature, but also has the lyric characteristics of lyric literature (especially poetic drama and opera). Drama literature generally includes tragedy, comedy, drama and so on. This dichotomy focuses on the main characteristics and internal laws of literary creation, which is very general and scientific. The quartering method is based on China's traditional classification and foreign classification, combined with the characteristics of China's modern literature genre, taking into account the external form characteristics of works such as expression techniques and image-building, as well as the differences in system, structure and language characteristics of works. It not only pays attention to the scientificity of literature classification, but also respects the habit of China's traditional style classification, so it has great vitality. In the history of China literature development, poetry and prose are the earliest literary genres with a long tradition. Among them, poetry includes lyric poetry and narrative poetry, because they are more similar than different in image building, organizational structure and language characteristics. As for the classification of prose as an independent category, apart from respecting the traditional classification habits of our country, it is mainly because this kind of literature has a wide range of genres and many themes, but it is different from poems, novels, drama literature and other works in reflecting the current home, shaping the image, institutional structure and language characteristics. Some of these varieties, such as essays and sketches, do have obvious literariness, although they do not have all the characteristics of literature. Fiction, because of its late development in China, has not been paid attention to in the traditional classification, and it has not been listed as an independent genre in the western trichotomy for a long time. However, it is superior to other literary works in reflecting the breadth and depth of life and the ability to describe and express life. Moreover, because it is a literary style centered on characterization, it has outstanding characteristics in character description, environmental description, plot narrative, structural arrangement and language use, which is obviously different from poetry and prose. For these reasons, the novel genre has achieved a high degree of development in modern countries and has become the most popular literary genre. As for drama literature, it basically adopts foreign classification, but it contains more varieties than the west. In the classification of literature, both the three-point method and the four-point method adopt the method of comprehensive induction to classify all kinds of literary varieties with similar characteristics and systems into one category; As far as the works of a certain genre are concerned, we can also use the analytical method to make a more detailed classification. For example, poetry can be divided into lyric poetry, narrative poetry or metrical poetry, free verse and so on. Novels can be divided into novels, novellas, short stories or modern novels, historical novels, science fiction and so on. Drama can be divided into poetic drama, traditional opera and drama, among which traditional opera can be divided into modern opera and traditional opera. As for prose, there are many kinds. The change and development of literary genre is related to the classification of literary genre. In the process of formation and development, some schools often absorb the factors of other schools, leading to the convergence or intersection between different schools. Prose poems, for example, are poetic in content, but close to prose in text system and language characteristics. Another example is poetic drama, which belongs to drama according to its basic characteristics, but its poetic dialogue or lines are authentic poems and can be classified as poems independently. Another example is the fable in the history of literature, which can be classified as both novel and prose. Modern new reportage sometimes has some characteristics of novels. All this shows that the classification of literature cannot be absolute. It is a historical development process from China's traditional dichotomy and Europe's traditional trisection to China's popular quartering. With the migration of the times, the development of social life, the accumulation of literary creation experience and the evolution of people's aesthetic taste, literary genres will inevitably flourish and decline. Marx once pointed out that ancient myths came into being under the immature social conditions of human childhood, with the development of productive forces and the fact that "natural forces were actually dominated and myths disappeared" (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 2, p. 1 13). This shows that the rise and fall of a certain literary genre in history is ultimately determined by socio-economic reasons. In class society, the rise and fall of literary genres are sometimes closely related to the situation of class struggle. The rise of China's essays since the May 4th Movement is an example. In modern society, the rapid development of science and technology and the accelerated pace of human life require writers to reflect the rapidly changing real life in time. As a result, a new literary genre with strong reality and fighting like reportage appeared, and some new literary varieties such as film literature, TV literature and mini-novels appeared. The appearance of these new literary styles will inevitably lead to new changes in literary classification. Therefore, we should not hold a fixed view on the classification of literature.