25.5022, Review: Ling & Literature: Burke (2014)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-5022. Thu Dec 11 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.5022, Review: Ling & Literature: Burke (2014)

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Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:48:36
From: Kim Jensen [kim at cgs.aau.dk]
Subject: The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-810.html

EDITOR: Michael  Burke
TITLE: The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics
SERIES TITLE: Routledge Handbooks in English Language Studies
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, Aalborg University

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

Edited by Michael Burke, “The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics” (henceforth,
RHS) introduces key concepts within stylistics and is aimed at anyone with an
interest in literature, language, or culture. The volume comprises 32
chapters, which are distributed over four thematic parts. Part I covers
'Historical perspectives in stylistics', and Part II is devoted to 'Core
issues in stylistics'. Part III is called 'Contemporary topics in stylistics',
while Part IV is entitled 'Emerging and future trends in stylistics'. Most
contributions to this volume contain suggestions for practice, discussions of
future directions, lists of suggested readings, and proper bibliographies. In
addition, there is a short introduction by Burke.

In Chapter 1 'Rhetoric and poetics: the classical heritage of stylistics',
Michael Burke discusses stylistics' roots in classical poetics and rhetoric,
addressing important works by classical scholars such as Plato, Aristotle,
Cicero, and Quintilian. Buke traces rhetoric and style from the work of Roman
Jakobson back to the teachings of Corax of Syracuse. The second chapter is
entitled 'Formalist stylistics'. In this chapter, Michael Burke and Kristy
Evers account for the contributions to stylistics of the Russian Formalists
and the structuralists of the Prague School ; there is also a brief discussion
of Chomsky's generative grammar and Culler's structuralist poetics. In Chapter
3 'Functionalist stylistics', Patricia Canning showcases Hallidayan stylistics
at work, as she offers an analysis of a chapter from Haggard's “King Solomon's
Mines” anchored in Systemic Functional Linguistics, or SFL (cf. Halliday
1994). In chapter 4 'Reader response criticism and stylistics', Jennifer
Riddle Harding discusses reader response theories in literary criticism and
the  approaches within contemporary stylistics and literary criticism that are
greatly influenced by it.

In Chapter 5 – which is the first chapter of Part II -- Christiana Gregoriou
tackles 'The linguistic levels of foregrounding in stylistics'. Focusing on
deviation and parallelism in a discussion rich in examples from movie
taglines, Gregoriou also provides an analysis of foregrounding devices in
Keyes' “Flowers for Algernon”. In Chapter 6 '(New) historical stylistics',
Beatrix Busse addresses historical stylistic analysis and makes a case for a
new version of historical stylistics which is anchored in the framework of
mobility (Büscher and Urry 2009). Chapter 7 'Stylistics, speech acts and
im/politeness theory', which is a contribution by Derek Bousfield, deals with
characterization through characters' speech acts, introduces the reader to
fundamental aspects of speech act theory (e.g. Austin 1962, Searle 1975, Grice
1975), and also briefly outlines Culpeper's (2001) control system model. Also
dealing with characterization, Chapter 8 'Stylitics, conversation analysis and
the cooperative principle' by Marina Lambrou shows how the conversational
structure of character dialog may be analyzed as a means of characterization.
In Chapter 9 'Stylistics and relevance theory', Billy Clark introduces the
basics of relevance theory and discusses its applicability to literary text
analysis. Clara Neary's contribution, Chapter 10 'Stylistics, point of view
and modality', deals with narratorial point of view and its relation to
modality, introducing the reader to Simpson's (1993) modal grammar of point of
view. In Chapter 11 'Stylistics and narratology', Dan Shen discusses and
compares similarities and differences between stylisticians' and
narratologists' approaches to point of view, characterization, and tense.
Addressing metaphor in Chapter 12 'Metaphor and stylistics', Szilvia Csábi
provides a historical overview of treatments of metaphor from Aristotle to the
present-day cognition-based multidisciplinary research, focusing on the
latter. The final chapter of Part II is Chapter 13 'Speech and thought
presentation in stylistics', in which Joe Bray introduces Leech and Short's
(1981, 2007) typology of speech and thought representation and provides an
analysis of speech and thought representation in David Foster Wallace's “The
Pale King”.

In the first chapter of Part III -- namely,Chapter 14 'Pedagogical stylistics'
-- Geoff Hall provides a historical survey of the interplay between stylistics
and English language teaching. Andrea Macrae, in chapter 15 'Stylistics, drama
and performance', discusses the significance of performance of play texts in
stylistic analysis of drama and provides a socio-pragmatic multimodal analysis
of a scene from “Private Lives”. Catherine Emmott, Marc Alexander, and Agnes
Marszalek's Chapter 16 'Schema theory in stylistics' offers an introduction to
schema theory and accounts for its roots in psychology and artificial
intelligence. The reader is also presented with a wealth of examples of how
schema theory may be applied in stylistic analysis. In Chapter 17 'Stylistics
and text world theory', Ernestine Lahey addresses text world theory, providing
a historical overview of its development, an introduction to its basic
theoretical concepts, and a survey of current research. Chapter 18 deals with
'Stylistics and blending', and here Barbara Dancygier introduces the reader to
conceptual integration/blending theory and illustrates its application in
stylistics, as she offers an analysis of blends in Wilfred Owen's poem
'Parable of the Old Man and the Young'. Margaret H. Freeman's contribution,
Chapter 19 'Cognitive poetics', offers an overview of definitions of cognitive
poetics, which accounts for some differences between Tsur's (2008) version of
cognitive poetics and the version adopted by most contemporary cognitive
stylisticians. This chapter also outlines some basic aspects of cognitive
poetics and illustrates their analytical application in an analysis of a short
poem by Emily Dickinson. Olivia Fialho and Sonia Zyngier discuss 'Quantitative
methodological approaches to stylistics' in Chapter 20. Fialho and Zyngier
first offer a list of critical issues and topics treated quantitatively in
stylistic research and provide references to actual studies addressing these.
A discussion of descriptive and explanatory statistics in stylistics is also
found in this chapter. In Chapter 21 'Feminist stylistics', Rocío Montoro
accounts for the history of feminist stylistics and introduces the reader more
generally to studies in language and gender as well as linguistic feminism.
Montoro links up the evolution of feminist stylistics with the three-wave
model typically applied to the history of feminism as such. Chantelle Warner's
chapter, Chapter 22 'Literary pragmatics and stylistics', offers a survey of
topics from pragmatics that have been applied in the analysis of literature;
many of these are treated in more detail in other chapters in RHS. In Chapter
23 'Corpus stylistics', Michaela Mahlberg takes the perspective of the digital
humanities and relates corpus stylistics to computing in the humanities more
generally. More specifically, she shows how principles and methods from corpus
linguistics can be applied in quantitative stylistic analysis and introduces
the reader to a number of useful tools and resources. Jean Boase-Beier
addresses 'Stylistics and translation' in Chapter 24 and discusses how
stylistics can help one's understanding of translation, and how style can be
understood through the lens of translation. The final chapter of Part III is
Chapter 25 'Critical stylistics', in which Lesley Jeffries discusses stylistic
analysis which draws on critical discourse analysis and, by inheritance, on
Hallidayan linguistics and lists a number of issues in literary discourse to
which critical stylistics may be applied.

The first chapter of Part IV is Chapter 26 'Creative writing and stylistics',
in which Jeremy Scott lists and discusses a number of areas where
practitioners of creative writing may benefit from stylistics. In Chapter 27
'Stylistics and real readers', David Peplow and Ronald Carter address literary
language from the perspective of the reader, rather than the text or the
author, and outline two fields of study: the empirical study of literature and
the naturalistic study of reading. Peplow and Carter refer to several studies
within either field and offer a critical evaluation of the methodological
aspects of both, as well as of their applicability and relevance within
stylistics. Michael Toolan discusses the possibility of a stylistics of film
in Chapter 28 'Stylistics and film' and the applicability of elements from
stylistic analysis in the study of film. Nina Nørgaard's contribution, Chapter
29 'Multimodality and stylistics', takes the reader through the basics of
multimodal stylistics and lists three multimodal aspects of the novel which
may be seen as semiotic modes – namely, layout, typography, and paper. In
Chapter 30 'Stylistics and comics', Charles Forceville, Elisabeth El Refaie,
and Gert Meesters address visual and linguistic aspects of style in comics.
Paola Trimarco deals with 'Stylistics and hypertext fiction' in Chapter 31 and
discusses hypertext features such as (non)linearity, multimodality, and
coherence, applying different types of stylistic analysis to the hypertexts
“afternoon, a story” and “These Waves of Girls”. The last chapter of the
volume is Patrick Colm Hogan's Chapter 32 'Stylistics, emotion and
neuroscience'. Hogan introduces some essential concepts in neuroscientific
approaches to emotion and style and also reports current research in this
respect.

EVALUATION

Although all chapters in the volume are highly informative and well written,
it is inevitable in handbooks such as RHS that some chapters are more
interesting and relevant to some readers than others. Readers who are new to
stylistics will probably find all chapters equally interesting and revelatory,
while seasoned stylisticians are likely to find Parts III and IV more
interesting than Parts I and II. For me, as a linguist with an interest in
cognition and corpus linguistics, Chapters 5, 9, 12, 16, 17,18, 19, 20, and 23
are naturally the most relevant, but I would also like to highlight the
following chapters for their contents and the way they convey their contents.

Together, Chapters 1 and 2 guide the reader from the ancient pre-history of
stylistics to its incarnation in the frameworks of Russian Formalism and
Prague Structuralism in a most elegant, informative and gripping fashion, and
any novice reader with an interest in the history of stylistics would benefit
from reading them. Likewise, Chapter 4, with its clear and succinct
introduction of the central contributions of five important figures -- namely,
Holland, Culler, Fetterley, Iser, and Fish -- in reader response theory
conveys its content excellently. Gregoriou's Chapter 5 is also clear and
succinct and rich in examples, and Chapter 7 is also to be highlighted due to
its easy-to-understand descriptions of otherwise complex concepts from speech
act theory. Chapter 15 deserves mention, because it deals with an aspect of
verbal art which has been somewhat neglected in stylistics as a whole and
successfully makes a case for the inclusion of drama as an object of stylistic
research. In introducing feminist stylistics, Chapter 21 also outlines a
number of general principles in studies of language and gender and provides a
glimpse of the three-wave model of feminism, all of which is accompanied by a
number of useful references. I think this chapter would serve as a perfect
entry point into feminist linguistics and gender studies for  undergraduate
students with an interest in cultural representations of gender. Focusing on
the interaction between texts and readers, Chapter 27 is arguably also a very
important contribution to RHS, as it reminds stylisticians that stylistics is
ultimately interested in the effect of literary language, and thus the
interaction between the reader and the literary text should be included in the
overall stylistic endeavor. Nørgaard's chapter on multimodal stylistics is,
along with Canning's chapter, the most detailed introduction to Hallidayan
stylistics in the volume. While Canning focuses on more traditional SFL and
its application in literary analysis, Nørgaard accounts for the Hallidayan
metafunctions in the SFL-derived social semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996,
2001) in such a clear fashion that her chapter would definitely serve as a
useful introduction to essential concepts in both SFL and social semiotics.
Canning's chapter on functionalist stylistics includes a very elegant and
compelling Hallidayan analysis which successfully tackles the discourse of
British colonialism and serves as an excellent example of Hallidayan
stylistics at work.

It strikes me as slightly odd that Canning's chapter appears in Part I. While
it is one of the best written contributions to RHS, it does not contain the
same historical perspective as the other chapters in Part I. Moreover, having
Canning's chapter in Part I might give some readers the impression that
functionalist stylistics equals Hallidayan stylistics, which is not the case;
Hallidayan stylistics is merely one type of functionalist stylistics. A
historically oriented chapter on functionalist stylistics in general would be
more appropriate in Part I, and Canning's contribution should have been placed
in Parts II or III. Likewise, I think that Busse's chapter is misplaced in
Part II, as the mobility turn in discourse analysis is still rather recent and
is still very much going on; surely, it cannot be a core issue in stylistics
yet. A chapter on “traditional” historical stylistics would have been more
appropriate in Part II, and Busse's contribution would be more relevant in
Part IV. Despite these, to me, odd organizational choices, the volume is
generally very well structured and progresses seamlessly through its chapters.
For instance, Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are nicely ordered, as each chapter focuses
on an area of literary pragmatics, and they all relate to the work of Grice.
Similarly, Chapters 10 and 11 are thematically related via their focus on
narratology, with the latter also linking up thematically with Chapters 7 and
8. Likewise, Chapters 16, 17, 18, and 19 -- all of which deal with ways in
which stylistics can be related to cognitive science -- are relevant to each
other and thus constitute an appropriately organized portion of Part II. Of
course, this results in some repetition across thematically related chapters,
but I think that novice readers may benefit from seeing the same theoretical
concepts applied differently in stylistic analysis.

The volume is targeted at readers who are new to stylistics, and most
contributors do an effective job of introducing the central topics of their
respective chapters. While the entire volume may be overwhelming to
undergraduate students, several of its chapters would be excellent readings
for a range of courses, including introductory courses in stylistics and
literary criticism. In addition, a number of chapters could serve as readings
in courses on discourse analysis (Chapters 6, 25, and 29), pragmatics
(Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 22), cognitive linguistics (Chapters 12, 16, 18, 19,
and 32), rhetoric Chapter 1), SFL (Chapters 3, 25 and 29), and quantitative
linguistics (Chapters 20 and 23). The volume would also come in handy for more
advanced students working on student projects in stylistics, discourse
analysis, or literary criticism, and such readers would be likely to find
inspiration for theoretical and methodological frameworks for their projects. 
With this in mind, it is recommended that university libraries acquire a least
one copy of this volume. It should be noted that, since the examples given
throughout the book are primarily from English language data, RHS is probably
of most interest to students of English. Moreover, researchers and teachers
within frameworks outside of language and literature studies might find some
chapters interesting. I can imagine that researchers within the fields of
gender studies, history, cognitive science, media studies, and digital
humanities would find this volume particularly attractive.

REFERENCES

Austin, J.L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Büscher, M. and J. Urry (2009). Mobile methods and the empirical. European
Journal of Social Theoty, 12(1): 99-116.

Culpeper, J. (2001). Language and Characterisation: People in Plays and Other
Texts. London: Longman.

Grice, P.H. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan, eds.
Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. 41-58.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1994). Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.). London:
Edward Arnold.

Kress, G. and T van Leeuwen (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual
Design. London: Routledge.

Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media
of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.

Leech, G.N. and M. Short (1981). Style in Fiction: A linguistic Introduction
to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman.

Leech, G.N. and M. Short (2007). Style in Fiction: A linguistic Introduction
to English Fictional Prose (2nd ed.). London: Logman.

Tsur, R. (2008). Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics (2nd ed.). Brighton:
Sussex Academic Press.

Searle, J.R. (1975). A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In K. Günderson, ed.
Language, Mind, and Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.
344-369.

Simpson, P. (1993). Language, Ideology and Point of View. London: Routledge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

An associate professor of English linguistics at Aalborg University, Kim
Ebensgaard Jensen is interested in the intersection of language, cognition,
and discourse (including literary discourse). He operates within the
frameworks of cognitive linguistics, construction grammar, and corpus
linguistics. His research interests include grammatical constructions,
construal operations, and usage-based descriptions of linguistic phenomena.








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