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Transcript of Discourse Analysis in Stylistics and Literature Instruction
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Annua l Review of Applied Linguistics
(1990) 11, 181-195. Printed in the USA.
Copyright © 1991 Ca mbrid ge University Press 0267-1905/91 $5.00 + .00
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN STYLISTICS AND LITERATURE INSTRUCTION
Mick Short
INTRODUCTION
The terms
discourse analysis
an d
stylistic analysis
mean different things to
different peo ple. Mo st narrowly defined, discourse analysis has only to do with the
structure of spoken discourse. Such a definition separates discourse analysis from
literary stylistics and pragmatics—the study of how people understand language in
context. At the other end of the spectrum, discourse analysis can be carried out on
spoken and written texts, and can include matters like textual coherence and cohesion,
and the inferencing of meaning by readers or listeners. In this case, it includes
pragmatics and much of stylistics within its bou nds. Similarly, stylistics can apply just
to literary texts or not, and be restricted to the study of style or, on the other hand,
include the study of mean ing. For the purposes of this review, relatively w ide
definitions of both areas have been assumed in order to make what follows reasonably
comprehensive. The main restriction assum ed is that the works discussed will be
relevant to the examination of literature in some w ay. The section on literature
instruction will include matters relevant to both native and non-native learners of
English, and will also make reference to the integration of literary and language study.
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN STYLISTICS
Perhaps the clearest examples of extended attempts to apply a particular
method of discourse analysis to literature are Burton (1980) and Korpimies
(1983). Both of these studies build on Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), which was
developed originally to account for interactional patterns in classroom language. The
Birmingham model is a relatively static, taxonomic model, which analyzes conversa-
tional
exchanges
as consisting of initiating
moves
(broken down into
acts
reminiscent
of, but not exactly the same as, Searle's speech acts). Exchanges themselves are
sub-units of higher level units, and so on. Burton and Korpimies both use the model,
with modifications, on dramatic texts. Burton discusses
The bald prima donna
by
Ionesco and
The dumb waiter
by Pinter. Korpim ies concentrates on Pinter's
The
181
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182 MICK SHORT
birthday party.
Both Burton and Korpimies find the need to redefine and invent
categories in order to account properly for their data, and this is one continual
disadvantage of the Birmingham m odel. How ever, this kind of approach does allow
one to describe patterns of interactional exchange; the approach can then be used to
show changes in the kind of interaction taking place, and the interactional traits of
different characters in terms of, for example, the kinds of speech acts used, tendencies
to take up the initiating or responding part in the dialogue, and so on.
Similar kinds of analysis using speech acts, sometimes in conjunction with
Labov's event analysis and the more flexible turn-taking descriptions of Sacks and
Schegloff and others, have also been used (e.g., Coulthard 1977, Fowler 1986, Downes
1988,
Austin 1989). Not surprisingly, descriptions developed to account for
conversational exchanges have tended to have their first applications on dramatic
dialogue. Bu t work on the other literary genres is also beginning to appear. Fow ler
(1986) and Leech and Short (1981) have commented on the novel, and Carter (1989),
Herman (1989), and Hoey (1989) all examine poetic texts.
The last three citations all refer to articles in Carter and Simpson (1989), one
of a group of recent volumes of papers concentrating partly or entirely on discourse
approaches to literature. Other significant collections in this area include van Dijk
(1985), Hickey (1989), van Peer (1988), van Peer and Renkema (1984), and Sell
(1990a). There is not space to describe each of these volumes in detail, and single
papers often undertake a number of different kinds of analysis, but some general trends
can be discerned. Th e Birmingham approach is continued by the work of Nash
(1989a) and Toolan (1989 ). La bo v's work on the structure of oral narratives is used in
Carter (1984) and also in Simpson (1988 ). La bo v's approach has parallels with a well
established approach to the study of narrative structure emanating from the work of
Propp (1968) and anthropologists such as Levi-Strauss. Maranda (1985) and Pavel
(1985) continue this tradition, and Longacre (1985) carries on another parallel strand,
that of macrostructure/microstructure analysis, associated principally with van Dijk and
his followers (cited elsewhere in this volume). Fleischman (1990) is a stimulating and
scholarly attempt to explain tense variation in narrative texts from medieval to modern
times using a wide range of discourse-analytical approaches, including Labov's work
on oral narratives, pragmatic accounts of meaning (see below), and Halliday and
Ha san 's (1989) work on textual cohesion. To olan 's (1988) book on narrative also
examines point of view, along with other aspects of narrative, including a Proppian
account of plot.
The methodologies discussed in the previous paragraph center on issues of
textual structure. But analysts interested in literature have also wanted to examine
discourse approaches that contribute more directly to the study of textual meaning.
Beginning with Pratt (1977), there has been some take-up of the Gricean approach in
pragmatics; this approach examines how a hearer infers intended meanings, distinct
from the meaning of the sentences uttered, on the basis of an assumed cooperative
principle in conversation and a series of related maxims of conversational behavior.
More recently, Grice's approach has been used in Downes (1988), Fowler (1986),
Herman (1986), Leech and Short (1981), Noguchi (1984), and Short (1989a). Sperber
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DISCOURSE ANALY SIS IN STYLISTICS AND LITERATURE INSTRUCTION 183
and Wilson's (1986) relevance theory model builds on and challenges Grice, and
claims to account for metaphor and irony, two notions at the heart of much literary
debate. Further attempts to elucidate these and other literary concepts include Furlong
(1989), Pilkington (1989; 1990), and Wilson and Sperber (1989). This use of Gricean
and neo-Gricean approaches is likely to grow in the future, and Searle's work on direct
and indirect speech acts is so endemic throughout recent collections that there is little
point in singling out particular articles which use Searle. York (198 6) uses pragmatic
theory, particularly speech acts, presupposition, and conversational implicature to
discuss, necessarily somewhat superficially, the interactive aspects of a range of
modern European poets. Nash (1985) provid es an account of com ic discourse which
makes reference to discoursal and pragmatic concepts in its explanation.
It can be seen from the above account that the take-up of particular discourse
approaches in stylistics tends to lag a few years behind their discussion in linguistics.
As a consequence, stylisticians often use somewhat old-fashioned and simplified
accounts of discourse approaches. For example, work using speech acts rarely takes
account of the now well-established fact that utterances are usually multi-valent in
speech act terms. This aspect of speech-act analysis is likely to receive more attention
in the future, as will, given the conflictual nature of much fictional dialogue, the more
recent criticisms of the Gricean approach that focus on the way in which the
cooperative principle ignores non-cooperative data.
It is likely that, in the future, work in politeness theory will gain more
currency. Like the work of Grice and Searle, politeness theory can be used to help
explain how unstated meanings get into texts and how we infer character relations.
Simpson (1989) and Wadman (1983) use politeness theory to discuss poems by George
Herbert and Ionesco's
The lesson
respectively, and Sell (1990b) examines politeness in
literature as a general phen om enon. Leech (1983) uses Grice in conjunction with
Leech's own version of politeness theory in an account of Johnson's "Celebrated
Letter" to Lord Chesterfield, and a forthcoming article will use a similar approach to
characterization in Shaw's
You never can tell.
Some discourse analysts use fiction as one of their sources of illustrative data
(e.g., Thomas 1989; forthcoming). Tannen (1989) explicitly discusses literature in her
interesting account of repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversation. Given the
connection between her approach and various extant aspects of literary stylistics, it is
likely that her work will be taken up in the future by linguistic analysts of literature.
As yet, there has been relatively little use of schema theory in the discussion
of literary understanding, but given its role in explaining understanding by examining
assumptions brought to texts in interaction with the texts themselves, this is likely to
be a future grow th area. Be aug rand e's work in schema theory is already well kno wn ,
and Beau grande (198 7) discusses schemas for literary interpretation. Cook (199 0) also
uses schema theory, suggesting a connection with foregrounding theory in an
interesting, though highly debatable, claim that literary texts are "schema refreshing"
whereas non-literary texts like advertisements are merely "schema reinforcing."
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184 MICK SHORT
Schema theory in particular, but also the inferential approaches of Grice and
others, presuppose a psychological account of what happens in the process of under-
standing. Psychological approach es to reading are evident in Halasz (1987) and van
Pe er's (1986) important work on foregrounding theory. Psychological approaches to
textual understanding have also resulted in mo re experimental, often informant-based,
empirical approaches. Van Peer (1986) and Halasz (1987) make contributions in this
area, as do Alderson and Sho rt (1989) and Short and van Peer (1989 ). The re is a
particularly strong tradition of empirical work on literary understanding in continental
Europe, as evidenced by the work of Schmidt and his followers (e.g., Schmidt 1982
and various contributions over the last few years to the journal
Poetics
and Steen
(1989). Kintgen (1983) is a book-length discussion of stud ents' protocol responses to
poetry which raises many interesting questions but has serious methodological flaws.
(See, for example, Carter's [1985] review.)
A recent growth area in British and Australian linguistics has been the area of
so-called critical linguistics, associated with the work of Fowler,
et al.
(1979),
Fairclough (198 9a), and others. This rapidly developing school uses linguistic analysis
to uncover hidden assumptions and ideological positions in texts, and thus has some
parallels with deconstructionist accounts of literature. M ost of the propon ents have
left-wing political views and use their accounts as a way of laying bare ideological
assumptions behind right-wing political speeches and docu men ts. Fairclough (1989b)
has recently coined the term critical discourse analysis for much of this work in order
to capture its avow edly text and discourse approach. Fo wle r's (1986) introduction to
linguistic criticism explicitly takes this approach into the field of literature, and Birch
(1989) and W eber (1989) continue the tradition. Although the work of this school is
undoubtedly stimulating, challenging assumptions about the avowed purpose of
particular discourses, it often tends to assume an automatic agreement with a left-wing
socio-political viewpoint; and it is perhaps surprising that analysts with more right-
wing political views have not used this approach on texts about which they feel
critical.
Critical linguists and discourse analysts often associate their work with the
linguist M . A. K. Halliday and the Russian linguistic critic M. M. Bakhtin. A
recurring theme that links the works of these two influential figures is the way in
which language varies from one person and situation to another, and the way in which
(what might at first sight look like) one kind of language regularly contains more than
one, varieties that are often at odds with one another. Specifically literary e xplorations
of language variety in literature can be seen in the contributions by Wales (1988),
Geyer-R yan (19 88), and Fowler (1989 ). Recen t explicitly Hallidayan, bu t rather
unexciting, introductions to stylistics are Cummins and Simmons (1983) and Haynes
(1989).
Hasan (1989) is also Hallidayan in orientation. Chapm an (1989) exam ines the
pragmatic use of dialect in Hardy's
The mayor of Casterbridge.
OTHER RECENT WORK IN STYLISTICS
The works discussed so far have in some reasonably explicit way taken the
findings of discourse analysis from linguistics and applied them to the study of
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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN STYLISTICS AND LITERATURE INSTRUCTION 185
literature. But, as noted in the introduction, most work in stylistics could be called
discourse analysis in the sense that it analyzes texts and deals with textual under-
standing. Toolan (1990 ), for exam ple, uses stylistic analysis in a critical account of
William Faulkner's
Go down Moses,
including a chapter, "monologue and dialogue,"
which looks at how discourse analysis and pragmatics can be used in accounting for
the novel. A volum e from the stylistics 'sta ble ' which tries to span the literary/
non-literary divide is Nash (1989b), a modern treatise on the persuasive art of rheto-
ric. Mo re disappointing, though an honest reflection of the conference it represen ts, is
Fabb,
et
a/.'s (1987) collection of papers from the 'Linguistics of Writing' conference
held in Glasgow in 1986. Billed as the 25th anniversary conference of the Indiana
"Conference on Style," which included Jakobson's (1960) famous article on linguistics
and poetics, this conference claimed to provide the impetus for language and literary
studies for the next quarter century. By and large, how ever, the proceed ings vo lume
consists of papers re-stating well-known positions and presents very little genuine
dialogue between the linguists and the literary critics.
Extending a systematic text analysis approach, Hasan (1989) claims a central
position for language analysis in verbal art. Assum ing that there is no such thing as a
special language of literature, she begins by examining stylistic features in nursery
rhymes to show how such rhymes are used to make young children aware of verbal
art, and goes on to employ similar forms of analysis on a poem and a short story. An
extremely useful handbook for someone trying to cope with the intersection of literary
and linguistic studies, including discourse analysis and pragmatics, is Wales' (1989)
dictionary of stylistics.
LITERATURE PEDAGOGY
While there is a considerable volume of material and texts compiled for the
purpose of teaching literature, much of it is fairly traditional in outlook. In order to
situate the role of discourse analysis and stylistics in the teaching of literature, two
introductory remarks will be helpful:
1. Very few work s devoted to literature teaching make explicit use of work in
discourse analysis and pragmatics. There are one or two exceptions to this
generalization, as we will see below, and a number of works do make more
covert use of discoursal concepts. As a consequence of the relative paucity of
discoursal approaches to literature teaching, this section will also examine
some of the issues related to the role of language in literature pedagogy and
vice versa.
2.
W e also need to be aware of two broad and separate traditions of English
literature teaching, one emanating from traditional university English depart-
ments in the English-speaking world, which has a generally humanistic bent,
and one from those interested in stylistics, language study, and the teaching of
English as a foreign language, which, not surprisingly, focuses more directly
on linguistic issues related to textual understanding.
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186 MICK SHORT
The humanistic approach to the teaching of English literature tends to assume
that the students being taught already have an ability to read, understand, and respond
sensitively to literature. This view, in my experience, is erroneou s, even at the
university level in the UK. But because large numbers of students want to study
English literature at the university, it has been possible for literature teachers to ignore
the problem of helping those wh o have understanding difficulties. By an almost
Darwinian process, those with problems go away and are replaced by other 'mo re
sensitive' read ers. Th e consequ ence is that talk about the nuts and bolts of teaching
methodology and the role and needs of the leamer seen in English-language teaching
contexts does not, by and large, take place in university English departm ents. The on e
hugely dominant and relatively unquestioned methodology is to have students read a
text, which is then discussed in class. In secondary schools in Britain, at least, in
which teachers have been trained mainly
via
this humanistic tradition, the approach
adopted to cope with student difficulties has tended to revolve around the selection of
simpler and more accessible texts for students to read and discuss.
The humanist tradition to English teaching is exemplified in Engell and
Perkins (1988), a collection of essays on what is needed in teaching literature.
Discussion of how to teach some text or other is entirely absent, and none of the
contributors embark on considering what an English syllabus appropriate to today's
students should look like. Instead, the issues discussed are of a much mo re general-
ized kind: should English courses include creative writing and political theory? To
what extent should they take account of feminist and deconstructionist readings, and
the latest views of critical theorists? And so on. The se are issues that those teaching
English literature should address, and I would certainly not want to argue against the
role of literary studies in the establishment of humanist and self-critical values; but for
the contributors to Engell and Perkins, a high-level reading competence on the part of
students is unquestioningly assum ed. This is in spite of the fact that many of the
volume's commentators themselves appear to be completely ignorant of how reading
works.
Vendler (1988), for example, appears to believe, in spite of considerable
research evidence in linguistics and psychology to the contrary, that reading is an
entirely passive process: "the state of reading...is a state in which the text works on us,
and not we on it" (1988:14). And her answer to the question "what texts should we
teach?" is that students should be taught "to love what we have loved" (1988:17 ). For
other commentators, the reading of poetry appears to be a quasi-mystical experience,
wh ere textual understanding appea rs almost irrelevant. Kenn er (1988) quotes
approvingly a ten-year-old girl's response to a poetry reading of
Briggflats
by the
author, Basil Bunting, as described in an essay written in adolescence:
It was his voice, raspy, deep, purring, falling like water, that carried
me aw ay....We w ere alone, he and I, in poetry...a self-sufficient unit
that read poetry and poured wine....I did not understand much of
Ba sil's vocabu lary, topics or historical allusions. His images utterly
lost me . I did not know w ho he was. Yet we experienced something
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DISCOURSE ANA LYS IS IN STYLISTICS AN D LITERATURE INSTRUCTION 187
special. W e travelled via poetry to places and images far away
(1988:10-11).
Kenner ends his essay with the comment
Now a collegian, she'd put that more maturely. No hurry. And
some day she'll get around to reading
Briggflats.
Bu t that evening
she learned the gist of how poetry works (1988:11).
It is apparent from her prose style that this 'collegian' was a precocious adolescent,
who w as always likely to do well. But the issue of how to help those not quite so
adept is never addressed by Kenner or his co-writers, in spite of the fact that in my
university, at least, first-year English students can be seen failing to understand poetry
with some regularity.
In contrast, Carter and Nash (1990) represents the more linguistic tradition in
literary studies and is designed for university students of English who have little or no
knowledge of linguistics and stylistics. Drawing on a range of examples from literary
and non-literary sources (particularly newspaper, advertising, and political language), it
discusses issues such as literariness, creau'veness in literary and non-literary usage,
ideological positions in texts, and competing accounts of style. This book concludes
with a set of exercises which provides a rich fund of issues for discussion in class. The
pedagogical technique of the book is reminiscent of that adopted in a number of
volumes devoted to the integration of language and literature study for advanced
non-native students of English. It is difficult to see, however, how such a text can be
used to equip native-speaking undergraduates with the linguistic analytical techniques
that the volume presupposes, and pushes the student towards. Herein lies a general
difficulty for teachers interested in using linguistics as a tool to help students under-
stand literary texts, a difficulty that can be seen most dramatically in the British
situation.
In Britain, explicit work on the English language has been absent for some
years from the school curriculum, and so students lack the metalanguage and descrip-
tive apparatus needed to talk sensitively about the language of texts, as is made clear
in Kingman,
et al.
(1988 ). Students can talk eloquently about their feelings after or
during reading , bu t much less well abou t the texts themselve s. Mo reover, the tradition
of teaching that students have experienced tends to make those who most need it
resistant to more analytical approaches like the linguistic one. How , then, can the
problem be solved? Th e latest approach of the stylistician is to try to talk interestingly
about literature in a way that assumes elements of linguistic knowledge so that the
linguistic knowledge can be introduced as it relates specifically to the text or issue
under discussion, and at a time when the student feels the information to be relevant.
The student thus feels less alienated from linguistic study. Th e hope is that an interest
in language will be awaken ed, which can then be built upon . W hether this approach
will be successful remains to be seen, but it should be clear that detailed matters of
teaching style and m ethodology are likely to play a crucial part. Carter and Nash
(1990) exemplify this new tradition, as do Breen and Short (1988), Hasan (1989) and,
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188 MICK SHORT
to some extent, Fow ler (1986 ). Dura nt and Fabb (1990) include this kind of approach
in a much wider task-based approach to the study of literature. As a consequence of
its wide coverage, the Durant and Fabb volume is most open to the criticism that it
raises interesting questions without giving students enough tools to tackle the problems
successfully. Such a book could, however, be a useful stepping- off poin t for a
well-informed teacher.
The approach discussed above is related to a parallel interest among special-
ists in English as a foreign language to reintroduce literary study into the English
language-learning curriculum. For som e years now, and for a variety of reason s, many
have regarded literary study as largely irrelevant to language teaching. The h uman ist
tradition referred to above tended to ignore the comprehension problems of non-native
learners and made literature seem special and different from the rest of language. This
view was reinforced by early work in stylistics which concentrated on the linguistic
deviation extan t in many poetic texts. Literary study was further marginalized by the
cost-benefit approach introduced with the advent of the concept of English for specific
purposes. Many teachers and students have reacted to this marginalization of literature
in second-language teaching; they would prefer to work for some of the time with
literary texts as they find them interesting and stimulating, and the assumption that
literature has a special language is subject to heated debate.
The consequence of this interest has been a number of collections devoted to
exploring the role of literature in language teaching. The mo st notable are B rumfit
(1983), Brumfit and Carter (1986), Carter, Walker and Brumfit (1989), and Short
(1989b). Volum e 1, num ber 2, of the journ al
Parlance
is also almost exclusively
devoted to this area. The common threads which connect these volumes are an
openness to discuss the status of literature and its role in language learning, a healthy
interest in the learner and appropriate teaching methodologies, and a similar interest in
the nuts and bolts of how texts work. As a consequence, contributions to literature
pedagogy that make use of discoursal approaches are beginning to appear. Van Peer
(1989), for example, examines ways of using literary texts to teach concepts related to
textual cohesion. Trengove (1989), examining the use of style variation in a poem by
Philip Larkin, shows how the analysis of the poem can be used to sensitize language
learners to style variation in English generally. To date, however, although emerging
influences can be perceived, there has been relatively little explicit use of discourse
theories in approaches to the teaching of literature.
Related to this more academic discussion of issues in the linguistic approach
to literature pedagogy has been the development of textbooks and teacher resource
books designed to introduce the foreign-language learner to the study of the language
of literature. Mo st notable are Carter and Long (198 7), a student workbook w ith an
associated teacher's book; Collie and Slater (1987), a resource book for teachers;
Gower and Pearson (1986), which, in spite of Gower's professed antipathy to the
stylistics approach in
ELTJ
and elsewhere, incorporates many ideas from stylistics in a
stimulating workbook aimed toward EFL students; and Greenwood (1988), a teacher
resource book aimed at helping teachers use class readers, but whose ideas are just as
helpful for teaching unmodified literary texts. Maley and Duff in various publications
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DISCOURSE ANA LYSIS IN STYLISTICS AN D LITERATURE INSTRUCTION 189
(e.g., Duff and Maley 1990) often use literature not just as an object of study in itself
but also as a stimulus to other class work emanating from ideas and attitudes found in
literary texts.
It should be clear from the foregoing that the linguistic approaches to the
teaching of literature in the native-speaking and non-native speaking classrooms have
much in common, in spite of what many literature specialists would have supposed.
An increasing cross-fertilization of ideas across the native/hon-native teaching divide is
thus likely in the new decade.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brumfit, C. J. and Carter, R. (eds.) 1986.
Literature and language teaching.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
This collection of twenty articles focuses on ways of linking language and
literary study. In particular, it addresses the concept of literariness, the
educational issues surrounding the teaching of literature in different countries,
and the competing demands of accurate and fluent reading for literature.
Carter, R. and W. Nash. 1990.
Seeing through language: A guide to styles of English
writing.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
As a text for students and teachers, the book attempts to develop an awareness
of language and the role it plays in literary and non-literary texts. Com ing
with a series of exercises and a glossarial index, it devotes chapters to
language and style, the concepts of literariness and creativity, and the role of
language in a range of text-types (e.g., poetry, fictional prose, advertising,
newspapers, political speeches and debate, and literary criticism).
Carter, R. and P. Simpson (eds.) 1989.
Language, discourse and literature.
London:
Unwin Hyman.
This is a wide-ranging collection of thirteen articles devoted to the use of
discourse and pragm atic approach es to literature. Exam ples from all three
literary genres are analyzed, and concepts employed include discourse
structure, the cooperative principle, politeness, the function of phatic
communication in fictional dialogue, language variation in literature, and
critical linguistics. It is the most impressive collection to date of
discoursal/pragmatic work on literature, with useful exercises for students at
the end of each essay.
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19 MICK SHORT
Carter, R., R. Walker and C. Brumfit (eds.) 1989.
Literature and the learner: Method-
ological approaches.
London: Modern English Publications and The British
Council.
Eleven articles discuss the use of literature and its stylistic analysis in the
teaching of language and literature. The articles range from the theoretical to
the extremely practical.
Hickey, L. (ed.) 1989.
The pragma tics of style.
London: Routledge.
This collection of eleven articles investigates the notion of style in literary and
non-literary discourses, and suggests the indispensability of a pragmatic
com ponen t to the study of style. W ith three sections— style in com munication
and comprehension, style in speech and situation, and style in literature and
learning—this collection includes experimental work on reading as well as
more armchair-based approaches.
Nash, W. 1989b.
Rhetoric: The wit of persuasion.
Oxford: Blackwell.
This volume, a modern treatise on the persuasive art of rhetoric, concentrates
on rhetoric functions as much a s its forms. Nash says that his aim is "to
rehabilitate rhetoric as an ordinary human competence," to be found every-
wh ere in langua ge use. Although Na sh 's view on rhetoric is one that has
considerable merit, and the book itself is clearly and entertainingly written, it
would have been more convincing if rather more space had been given to
interesting rhetorical practices in non-literary texts.
Peer, W. van and J. Renkema (eds.) 1984.
Pragmatics and stylistics.
Louvain:
Uitgeverij Acco.
The eleven articles (five are in German) represent a wide-ranging collection,
which varies in quality. The articles, as a group, explore the relevance of
pragmatics as developed in the Anglo-American and German traditions to
literary and non-literary stylistics. Topics covered include the relevance of
pragmatics to the concepts of style, narrative structure, foregrounding, and
creativeness. Th e text-types exam ined include poetry, fictional pros e, and
newspaper reports.
Sell, R. (ed.) 1990a.
Literary pragmatics.
London : Routledge and Kegan Paul.
This book provides an extremely wide ranging collection of articles in what
the editor claims is the area of literary pragm atics. As defined her e, literary
pragmatics as a concept seems to be so general as to lose real descriptive
power, although the aim of providing an antidote to over-specialization is to
be welcom ed. Areas covered include literariness, interpretability, politeness,
relevance theory, indirect discourse, empirical approaches, the interaction
between writer and audience in dramatic texts, the effect of the circumstances
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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN STYLISTICS AND LITERATURE INSTRUCTION 191
of publication on interpretation, and cross cultural problems in the perception
of literature.
Short, M. 1989b.
Reading, analysing and teaching literature.,
London: Longman.
This volume is a collection of eleven articles on stylistics, experiments in the
reading comprehension of literary texts, and the use of stylistic approaches in
the teaching of language and literature. It contains a useful bibliograph ical
account by Carter of the aims and methods of stylistic analysis.
Wales, K. 1989.
A dictionary of stylistics.
London: Longman.
In an attempt to be useful to students and scholars arriving at the lan-
guage/literature crossroads from different directions, this dictionary of stylis-
tics is wide-ranging in its entries, including material from stylistics, literary
theory, traditional rhetoric, and linguistics (including discourse analysis and
pragm atics). Such volumes can always be criticized for leaving something or
other out, or giving too much or too little space to particular terms, but this
dictionary constitutes a mine of information with extremely full and often
entertaining entries including, where appropriate, discussions of textual
examples of the concepts discussed.
UN NNOT TED BIBLIOGR PHY
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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN STYLISTICS AND LITERATURE INSTRUCTION 195
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