英语文体学教程_教案

Stylistics
is the study of varieties of language whose properties position that language in context. For example, the language of advertising, politics, religion, individual authors, etc., or the language of a period in time, all belong in a particular situation.
Chapter 1 I. Definition of stylistics ―The study of that variation in language which is dependent on the situation in which the language is used. Although stylistics sometimes includes investigation of spoken language, it usually refers to the study of written language, including literary texts. Stylistics is concerned with the choices that are available to a writer and the reasons why particular forms and expressions are used rather than others.‖ (Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics)
The development of stylistics 1. Modern stylistics got its development in the 19th and 20th centuries from rhetoric and from the interpretation of literature. The first book on stylistics was written by a French scholar Charles Bally, student of F. D. Saussure in 1902, was considered a landmark of modern stylistics. Later, Spitzer, a German scholar began to analyze literary works form a stylistic point of view, and was often considered as the ―father of literary stylistics.
3. From the end of 1950s to the present time, modern stylistics reached its prosperity. This can be further divided into roughly four periods: a. Fromห้องสมุดไป่ตู้the end of the 1950s to the end of the 1960s, formal stylistics prevailed. b. The second period is the 1970s, in which functional stylistics predominated. c. In the 1980s, discourse stylistics flourished. d. In the 1990s, the socio-historical/ socio-cultural stylistics or contextualized stylistics developed quickly.
Widdowson provides a more informative definition: ―By stylistics, I mean the study of literary discourse from a linguistic orientation and I shall take the view that what distinguishes stylistics from literary criticism on the one hand and linguistics on the other is that it is essentially a means of linking the two‖
G. Leech defines style as the study of the use of language in literature, a meeting-ground of linguistics and literary study.
In short, stylistics is defined as the study of discourse or text on the basis of modern linguistic theories.
Stylistics
also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialisation, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.
2. From the beginning of the 1930 to the end of the 1950s stylistics was developing slowly and was only confined to the European continent. During this period, the Russian formalists, the Prague School and the French structuralists all contributed to the development of stylistics.