The interface between stylistics and phraseology (original) (raw)

Exploring English Stylistics A Comprehensive Guide for Language Teachers by Hasan Alisoy

2023

Welcome to "Exploring English Stylistics: A Comprehensive Guide for Language Teachers," a book into the intricate world of stylistics and its profound impact on English language teaching. This book is born out of a passion for understanding the nuances of language and a commitment to enhancing the pedagogical approaches of language educators. As a lecturer at Nakhchivan State University and a language enthusiast, I have always been fascinated by the power of stylistics in shaping our understanding and teaching of the English language. The purpose of this book is to provide a comprehensive, accessible guide for language teachers who wish to incorporate stylistic analysis into their teaching repertoire. In this book, you will find an in-depth exploration of various facets of stylistics – from its basic concepts, branches, and approaches, to its practical applications in the classroom. Each chapter is meticulously crafted to delve into different aspects of stylistics, ensuring that both novice and experienced educators find valuable insights and tools. Chapter 1 sets the stage by introducing stylistics and its significance in language teaching. Subsequent chapters explore the richness of expressive means and stylistic devices, the varied nature of language, and the history of the English literary language. The book progresses to cover meaning from a stylistic perspective, the classification of English vocabulary, phonetic and lexical expressive means, and the art of stylistic intensification. Special attention is given to syntactical expressive means and structural meaning, showcasing their stylistic use and impact. The book culminates with an overview of functional styles and a fascinating dive into the allure of belles-lettres style and publicistic style. Each chapter is complemented with exercises, quizzes, and reflective essays to encourage active engagement and practical application. The goal is not only to inform but also to inspire language teachers to explore and experiment with stylistic analysis in their teaching practices. I hope this book serves as a valuable resource for language educators and ignites a passion for exploring the stylistic dimensions of the English language. Thank you for embarking on this journey with me.

Stylistic Analysis and the Teaching of Literature: A Linguistic Approach

2012

The present work explores the possibilities of adopting a language based approach to the teaching of literature in the English language classroom. The work is necessitated by the fact that there has been an urgent need to re-examine the traditional approach to the literature teaching which has relied on literary criticism. The teacher devotes most of his time to discussing the social and literary background and very little time to the literary work itself. An analysis of a literary work can no longer be treated as a matter of personal insight and understanding alone. The students can make use of their knowledge of linguistics and grammar in the literature class. Bright and McGregor (1976: 222) begin their model lesson with the reading of the poem without any direct introduction because what is not in the poem does not matter. The literary work should be the focus of the lesson and not the background.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION TO STYLE AND STYLISTICS CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION TO STYLE AND STYLISTICS

Literary criticism in the past few years has come to realise the importance of studying the language of literature which is one of the most complex and multifaceted phenomena. This has been done not with the help of rhetoric, but with the help of linguistics. In the history of English literary criticism, this initiative was made by I .A Richards (1929) and William Empson (1930). This new tendency in literary criticism did not receive any new label at that time. But the 'Why' and 'How1 of language teaching became the major questions of that time. Spitzer (1988) is a biographical introduction of the champions of the new criticism. He put forth a new method of studying the language of literature. His method is based on a minute statistical study of the technique of language combined with a judicious use of the theories of linguistics. This sort of study has come to be known as 'stylistics'. The world of literary criticism is full of theories which focus on different aspects of literature in attempts to investigate its function, nature and effect. Abrams made commendable efforts to summarise the overwhelming variety of critical theories from the classical to the modem times into four-fold categories of expressive, pragmatic, mimetic and objective theories (Abrams.1972, first published in 1953). With this comprehensive framework suggested by him, 1 -however, there still remains a vast residue of other categories of literary scholarship like the study of literary history, convention, genre and mythology. The universal appeal of literature can be traced as it is rightly pointed out by Ching et. al. (1980), the capacity and primacy of all human beings "to conceptualise, reshape and communicate the experiences of life through language "(p.5). Language is not merely an incidental medium of literature, it is an integral part of the whole creative process. In the modern times many scholars have attempted to investigate literature through the features of its language as well as the assumption regarding the inseparability of literature and its language. Chomsky (1957) describes these principles in terms of linguistic 'competence' and 'performance'. There were numerous efforts to apply the developing linguistic methodologies of Chomsky to literary analysis. Therefore, the language of literature became a centre point of both critical and linguistic investigations of literature which attempt to bridge the gap between the two disciplines of linguistic and criticism, this attempt is known as 'stylistics'. Stylistics in its course of development seems to deserve the status of fullfledged academic discipline in its own right in much the same way as biochemistry, which draws on biology and chemistry, can claim to be an independent discipline (Jaioru 1995). Stylistics as a new discipline faced some objections and there were some negative reactions from both the quarters of linguistics and criticism. Most of the negative criticism was from the conservative circles created by what is generally known as the 'language -literature problem'. In the next sections I intend to -2-provide a historical perspective on style and stylistics by making some major intellectual movement which led to its emergence and growth. 1.2 The Notion of Style Style is most often discussed in the context of literary studies. However the word 'style' in its most general sense of 'a way of doing things' is used in multiple contexts. The collocation range of this word enfolds almost every sphere of human activity. The Oxford English Dictionary has recorded as many as twenty-eight different entries under the term style. As a critical concept style has been the focus of attention for centuries and has been studied from various perspectives. Different schools of thought worked in explaining and understanding this term, which put a large number of definitions which some of them appear to be overlapping while others seem to be contradictory. As a literary critical term, 'style' denotes a characteristic use of language. Style has been variously defined according to its orientation in the writer's personality, the impressions of the reader, an individual text, and the collective features of a genre. The discussion of stylistics as a sensitive study of style should begin with a background knowledge of some of the major notion of style in terms of literacycriticism and linguistics. 1.2.1 Traditional Notion of Style The origin of the concept of style or the early attempt to study style can be traced back to the classical school of rhetoric, which regards style as a part of the -3 " technique of persuasion and discusses it under oratory. According to classical tradition, oratory is the art of discovering all possible means of persuasion. A branch of rhetoric in ancient Greece, 'eloetio' was specially related to the relation between form (vorba) and content (res) and the characteristic features of literary language. The discipline has originated the popular dualist approach to style based on the dichotomy between form and content. All the 'rhetorical' notions of style, which persisted through many succeeding centuries, hold this dualist view as against the monist one (Leech and Short, 1881). There are many figurative descriptions of this view of style during the history of Renaissance and Newclassical periods. Puttenham, a Renaissance scholar, compares style to flowers, jewels, embroidery. For Samuel Wesley, it is a 'dress of thought'. Pope describes stylistics as the equivalent of 'true wit', which consists in 'what oft was thought, but never so well expressed' and other definition as well. All these definitions or descriptions reflect an artificial and ornamental view of style. In all these centuries, style was the focus on the doctrine of 'decorum.' Three main types of style were learned grand, middle and plain. The traditional dualistic view later clashed with the monist organic view of style of the new critics. For them the underlying thought can never be separated from its final verbal form and that the only means of reading the writer's mind is the completed text, which is a product of the synthesis of thought and style. The traditional notion of style has other weaknesses of being prescriptive and not descriptive in its nature and scope. It is interested in providing only a 'set of maxims' which should be rigorously producing certain effects. It is full of words having fixed meaning and certain types of structures are invariably associated -4-

Towards a Cultural Approach to Stylistics

This paper discusses the different approaches to stylistics, here regarded as the cutting edge in literary-linguistic enquiry, and presents the possible benefits of a contextualized stylistics to the teaching of literature. Starting from the assumption that stylistics is a very troubled and slippery concept, it points out how the different linguistic approaches to the literary text have moved from universals and microlinguistic observations to the study of context and its influence in the way people behave, speak and communicate. The main objective of this paper is to argue that stylistics can sit very comfortably between language and literature, contribute to the understanding of the text as cultural praxis, and thus work as a bridge between cultural, literary and linguistic studies. To support this argument, some of the different lights under which stylistics has been seen are discussed. The paper concludes by offering a theoretical model which may help describe a contextualized pedagogical stylistics.

stylistic concepts and their application in teaching

isara solutions, 2017

This Paper proposes to follow the beginning and improvement of different hypotheses and endeavors in the field of showing English as a subsequent language. The paper presents a brief history of English language instructing in its endeavor to investigate explicit conditions under which different strategies advanced and made due, with the expectation it will give us extra assets and improved perspective for our current methodological concerns.

Language, Cognition and Style: An Introduction to the Cognitive Stylistics Section

ODISEA, 2021

Esta es una introducción a la Estilística Cognitiva, definida de manera general como el estudio del estilo desde una perspectiva cognitiva. La estilística se ocupa no solo del análisis de las características lingüísticas internas de una proposición lingüística determinada o de un tramo de discurso, sino también de lo que se encuentra fuera del texto, es decir, el autor, el contexto sociocultural, el género, etc. Se basa en el supuesto principal de que la función y el significado de un texto pueden interpretarse a la luz de sus aspectos formales, comprometiéndose así en la descripción formal y su relación con una situación y un contexto cognitivo determinados.

Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature

London: Longman, 1975

In Stylistics Richard Bradford provides a definitive introductory guide to modern critical ideas on literary style and stylistics. The book includes examples of poems, plays and novels from Shakespeare to the present day.

Phraseological Units in Literary Discourse: Implications for Teaching and Learning

2001

This article explores the stylistical use of phraseological units in literary discourse. A phraseological unit may extend across sentence boundaries and even large stretches of text, creating a continuity, a web of unique interrelationships of figurative and direct meanings, and associative links. Sustained discoursal use of a phraseological unit contributes to the perception of the text as a cohesive and coherent entity. Failure to identify stylistic use will be to the detriment of inference and interpretation, and hence a semantic and stylistic loss. The article also considers the implications of a discourse-based approach to phraseological units in teaching and learning. The exploration of the discoursal potential of phraseological units is of immediate relevance to the studies of language and literature as an area of applied stylistics. Teaching stylistic use helps to disclose the cognitive processes of the mind in creative thinking. It can lead to significant gains in stylistic...