Controversies in stylistics: Leading to the culmination of new approaches

The tremendous development of stylistics over the last four decades has brought about the growth of different approaches. as the essence of stylistics is integrating linguistics with literature,it has become a controversial subject particularly among literary critics and linguists. the dissension among scholars is a product of their own research in and therefore grounded in solid empirical study. thus,the article discusses various approaches as reported in the stylistics literature along with their respective strengths and weaknesses. thus,the paper attempts to shed some light on the controversies of stylistics in general as well as the various approaches. © universiti putra malaysia press.