LING 450: Stylistics
Course Aims and Objectives
This module is concerned with the linguistic analysis of literary texts. Its main aim is to enable you to use linguistic analysis in order to explain how literary texts achieve their effects (e.g. how they convey new views of reality, how they project text worlds and characters, how they convey different points of view).The module introduces the most central concepts in stylistics, including recent advances in the field (especially in corpus-based stylistics and cognitive stylistics). The focus is mostly on prose fiction, but poetry and drama will also be considered.
Course Content
- Deviation, parallelism and foregrounding
- Metaphor
- Point of view
- Mind style
- Speech and thought presentation
- Text worlds 1: the construction and development of text worlds
- Text worlds 2: background knowledge and text worlds
- Characterisation 1: background knowledge and characterisation
- Characterisation 2: textual clues and characterisation
Assessment
A 5,000 word written assignment.
Recommended Reading
Culpeper, J., (2001) Language and Characterisation in Plays and Other Texts. London: Longman.
Semino, E., (1997) Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. London: Longman.
Semino, E. and Culpeper, J. (2002) Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Short, M., (1996) Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London: Longman.
Additional Information
This course is taught in Term 2