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Stylistics (ENG -430): Course Outline(ENG-430)

Stylistics is the study of the linguistic features of texts, analyzing how language choices shape meaning, style, and interpretation. It bridges linguistics and literary criticism, examining elements like tone, diction, syntax, and figurative language to

Course description

This course aims to expose students to the analysis of literary as well as non-literary texts by enabling them to invest their knowledge of linguistics. In this regard, the analysis will aim at enhancing the student's ability to analyze the writer’s/speaker’s style and the way he/she has chosen to say what he says in the way the text shows. This course offers an introduction to the study of literary stylistics. This comprises three main activities: identifying specific linguistic features, analyzing these linguistically, and interpreting their communicative function in the reading and understanding of the text. Stylistic features relating to the three genres of poetic, narrative, and dramatic texts are introduced during the course. For each genre, we study some of the typical stylistic techniques characterizing the genre and analyze a number of texts demonstrating them.

Course objectives

The objectives of this course are to:

  • Give a general account of the main principles and procedures involved in describing the style of a text.
  • Acquire a substantial amount of linguistic terminology and skills for analyzing literaryDevelop students’ insights in writing correct sentence structure.
  • Understand the linguistic levels of foregrounding the literary text. 
  • Familiarise the students with the different styles of the writers and their purpose. 
  • Sharpen the students’ skills to analyze a literary text by understanding all the literary /linguistic devices used by the writer.

Teaching-learning Strategies

Teaching will be done through the lecture method with a combination of tasks/projects and presentations

Assessment and Examinations

Assessment will be done as per university/department policy.

Course contents

Unit-I

  • What is stylistics?      
  • Developments in stylistics
  • Is there a ‘literary language’?

Unit-II  

  •  
  • Stylistics and levels of language;
  • Levels of language at work: an example from poetry;
  • Style, register, and dialect

Unit-III

  • The linguistic levels of foregrounding in stylistics
  • Grammar and style;
  • Sentence styles: development and illustration 
  • Grammar and genre: a short study in Imagism Verbs

Unit-IV                            

  • Narrative stylistics;
  • Developments in structural narratology;
  • A sociolinguistic model of narrative
  • Stylistics and narratology (Dan Shen)

Unit-V

  • Style as a choice;
  • Style and transitivity;
  • Transitivity, characterization, and literary genre
  • Style and point of view;
  • Approaches to point of view
  • Exploring point of view in narrative fiction
  • Stylistics, point of view and modality (Clara Neary

Unit-VI

  • Representing speech and thought;
  • Techniques of speech and thought presentation
  • Dialogue and discourse;
  • Dialogue in drama;
  • Exploring dialogue

Unit-VII

  • Cognitive stylistics;
  • Developments in cognitive stylistics;
  • Cognitive stylistics at work
  • Metaphor and metonymy;  
  • Styles of metaphor
  • Exploring metaphors in different kinds of texts
  • Metaphor and stylistics (Szilvia Csábi)

Unit-VIII

  • Stylistics and translation (Jean Boase-Beier

Textbooks

Suggested Books