Stylistics

Stylistics

Stylistics in the

early twenty-first century

Stylistics is important in

language teaching and creative writing courses.

Examples of sub-displaces of cognitive stylistic as

feminist stylistics, cognitive stylistics and discourse stylistics.

The preferred object of study in stylistics is

literature

The purpose of stylistics is

to explore creativity in language use.

Language is important to stylistics

as the various forms, patterns and levels are important to the function (not the form) of the text.

Stylistic analysis should be:

Rigorous

Retrievable

Replicable

Rigorous

It should be based on an explicit framework of analysis

Retrievable

means that the analysis is organized through explicit terms and criteria, the meanings of which are agreed upon by other students of stylistics

Replicable

does not mean that we should all try to copy each other's works.

There is no necessarily 'natural' starting level in a stylistic analysis

one level may complement another level.

The smaller grammatical unit known as

morphemes

The largest grammatical unit known as

sentence

is the conditions under which a sentence regarded as true or false.

Truth value

Above these core levels of language there is

discourse

The term discourse

used to show aspects of communication that lie beyond the organization of sentences.

Contemporary stylistics

looks towards language as discourse

and

towards the text as a function of language in context.

Contemporary stylistics

look towards the text as a function of language in context.

Most theories of grammar accept that grammatical units are ordered

hierarchically according to their size not meaning

Rank scale:

is the hierarchy order of the grammar units.

The rank scale from the largest to the smallest is:

(sentence, clause, phrase, morpheme)

. The most important unit on the scale is

the clause.

Elements of clause structure are

the Subject (S), the Predicator (P), the Complement (C) and the Adjunct (A)

Imperative clauses used for

requests and commands, like 'Mind your head' or 'Turn on the phone, please'.

Interrogatives used for

asking questions. For example, 'Does the woman feed those pigeons regularly?

Metre

an organized pattern of strong and weak syllables.

We recognize the poem is a poem not another type of text when we hear it because of

metre

Rhythm

is a patterned movement of pulses in time which is defined both by periodicity and repetition

Rhythm is defined by both

periodicity and repetition

That repetition, into a regular phrasing across a line of verse

is what makes rhythm.

Foot:

is the basic unit of analysis

Foot it refers to the span

stressed and unstressed syllables that forms a rhythmical pattern.

Types of foot:

iambic foot

trochaic foot

An iambic foot:

two syllables, the first is less stressed than the second.

trochaic foot

by contrast, two syllables, the second is less stressed than the first

Metrical boundaries are

no respecters of word boundaries.

Alliteration

is a type of rhyme scheme which is based on similarities between consonants.

Narrative discourse provides a way of

telling felt experience by matching up patterns of language to a connected series of events.

Narrative requires development and it requires a

sufficient degree of stylistic flourish

Stories narrated without that flourish will often feel

flat and dull (not interesting).

plot

refers to the abstract (not concrete) storyline of a narrative and to the sequence of ordered events which create the 'inner core' of a narrative.

Narrative discourse

refers to the manner by which that plot is narrated.

Two common narrative media are

film and the novel.

Sociolinguistic code expresses through language:

The historical, cultural and linguistic setting which frames a narrative.

Sociolinguistic code locates the narrative in

time and place.

Actions and events

describe how the development of character precipitates and inter locates the narrative in time and place sects with the actions and events of a story.

Point of view explores

the relationship between mode of narration and a character's or narrator's 'point of view'.

Textual structure accounts for the way

individual narrative units are arranged and organised in a story

Intertextuality

is reserved for the technique of 'allusion'

Transitivity

is the particular grammatical facility used for capturing experience in language

Transitivity refers to the way

meanings are encoded in the clause.

Transitivity components:

1- the process itself

2- the participant(s)

3- the circumstances

1- the process itself

realized in grammar by the verb phrase.

2- the participant(s)

associated with the process, typically realised by noun phrases.

3- the circumstances

associated with the process , typically expressed by prepositional and adverb phrases.

First narrator:

one of the characters tells the story

The story might be narrated in the third person which means by

an invisible narrator

Third person narrator is

external and situated outside the story.

Schema

a way of configuring the structure of dialogue in plays

The fictional context

surrounds the characters within the world of the play.

The 'real' context

frames the interaction between author and reader.

One common principle to many models of discourse analysis is

the understanding that all naturally occurring language takes place in a context of use

We can divide context into three basic categories:

Physical context

Personal context

Cognitive context

Physical context:

This is the actual setting in which interaction takes place.

In face-to-face conversation,

speaker and hearer share the same physical context

In broadcast or telephone talk

speaker and hearer are physically separated.

Personal context:

refers to the social and personal relationships of the interactants to one another

Personal context also encompasses

social networks and group membership, and the relative status and social distance that pertains between participants

Cognitive context:

This refers to the shared and background knowledge held by participants in interaction

Cognitive context also extends to

a speaker's world-view, cultural knowledge and past experiences.

Metaphor

a process of mapping between two different conceptual domains: the target domain and the source domain.

The target domain

is the topic or concept that you want to describe through the metaphor

The source domain

refers to the concept that you draw upon in order to create the metaphorical construction

Metonymy

a transfer within a single conceptual domain.

Synecdoche

metonymy in which the part stands for the whole, for example, 'hired hand'.

Parody and satire

are forms of verbal humour which draw on a particular kind of irony for the design of their stylistic incongruity.

Irony

the space between what you say and what you mean.

The term ideology refers to

the matrix of beliefs we use to comprehend the world and to the value systems through and by which we interact in societ

The concept of point of view on the ideological plane

refers to the way in which a text mediates a set of particular ideological beliefs through either character, narrator or author.

Point of view on the temporal plane

is about the way relationships of time are signaled in narrative

Temporal point of view envelops a whole series of stylistic techniques such as

repetition, flashback and flashforward

Temporal point of view basically covers

any kind of time (not place) sequence in narrative.

Spatial point of view

is a device which has palpable grammatical exponents in deixis and in locative expressions

Spatial viewpoint

is really one dimension of the broader technique of psychological point of view (not ideological)

The study of discourse in terms of strategy focuses

on the way speakers use different interactive tactics at specific points during a sequence of talk

Analysing play dialogue in terms of discourse strategy

often involves cross-reference between the character level and the higherorder interactive level of playwright and audience/reader.

Schema theory

is an umbrella term covering a range of individual cognitive models at the heart of which are situated the core concept schema and the attendant concepts frame, scenario and script.

A script is

a chunk of knowledge which describes 'a predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a well-known situation

The importance of the script-based framework lies mainly in

its capacity to explain how we can understand texts without having to rely on explicit linguistic signals in the text

The restaurant script

is a knowledge structure which is activated by an essential precondition - that is, wanting to eat (not to study).

Scripts allow for

new conceptualizations of objects within them just as if these objects had been previously mentioned.

The term code-switching

is normally used to explain transitions between distinct (not similar) languages in a text .

Literary code-switching

is a method that denotes movement between frames of reference.

Idiolect

reserved for an individual's special unique style.

Dialects are

distinguished by patterns in grammar and vocabulary

accents

are distinguished through patterns of pronunciation.

Antilanguages

are the semi-secretive languages born out of subcultures and alternative societies .

These societies, 'antisocieties', are

consciously established as alternatives to mainstream society

Antilanguages play

an important part in the style of literary works which are thematically concerned with such anti-societies

The most important process in the formation of an antilanguage is

relexicalisation