Charles Bally

Swiss philologist

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June 18, 2026

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Charles Bally was a Swiss philologist known for his work on stylistics. He proposed that style in language arises from the choices available to a speaker or writer among different expressions, each carrying a distinct evocative value. This perspective emphasizes the connection between style and linguistics, suggesting that a writer's habitual choices in sounds, words, and sentence structures reveal their personality. Bally, along with Albert Sèchehaye, was instrumental in reconstructing and publishing Ferdinand de Saussure's lectures, which formed the basis of the influential Course in General Linguistics. This work is considered a foundational text for 20th-century structural linguistics.12

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stylistics
…the ideas that derive from Charles Bally (1865–1947), the Swiss philologist, and Leo Spitzer (1887–1960), the Austrian literary critic. According to followers of these thinkers, style in language arises from the possibility of choice among alternative forms of expression, as for example, between “children,” “kids,” “youngsters,” and “youths,” each of…
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…the ideas that derive from Charles Bally (1865–1947), the Swiss philologist, and Leo Spitzer (1887–1960), the Austrian literary critic. According to followers of these thinkers, style in language arises from the possibility of choice among alternative forms of expression, as for example, between “children,” “kids,” “youngsters,” and “youths,” each of…
Read More