A Linguistic-Stylistic Analysis of the Narrative 'Oliver Twist'
English Language Department, Maragheh Branch, Azad University, Maragheh, Iran
Davud Kuhi Ph. D
Gasem Shojaian M.A
Abstract
In the present paper, the studied case is the narrative 'Oliver Twist' and the linguistic
choices being analyzed are the stylistic devices, one of the main linguistic constructions
which Charles Dickens employs to create meaning in this novel. Linguists define Stylistic
Analysis in numerous ways, and a certain amount of terminological confusion exists as a
result of these varied, often conflicting definitions. However, in the present study, the
narrowest, most restrictive approach possible has been adopted, accounting for and analyzing
only those devices that all linguists would agree upon. The analysis essentially corresponds to
the one proposed by Leech (1969) in which the stylistic devices have a relative construction
defining a variable whose value is specified by the foregrounded linguistic elements. Since
Leech's three Levels of Language does indeed connect the 'what' with the 'how', the
taxonomy can be used any number of ways in the English Literature (EL) classrooms in
universities. But it is especially effective in teaching the Reading Skill. The necessity of using
this taxonomy with students of English Literature to provide background knowledge to the
students before they begin actual reading instruction has been discussed in the present study.
Key Words: Narrative, Stylistic Analysis, Foregrounded Linguistic Elements.
1. Introduction
Literature plays an important role in most language classrooms worldwide. Although we
see variations in content and teaching approaches as well as in how literature is justified.
Some emphasize the national literature, others read world literature. Some countries read
contemporary as well as traditional literature, others mostly traditional. In linguistics
narrative, the written or oral account of a real or fictional story is one of the first discourse
genres to be analyzed, and it has continued to be among the most intensively studied of the
things people do with talks. (Johnston in Schiffrin 2003).In universities which offer literary
or reading courses, narratives normally have place and are often read throughout the classes.
Sometimes, contemporary or traditional literary texts tend to play a more prominent role. The
function of literature in language classrooms is often connected to the underlying notions in a
literary text, in other words: literature is thought of as a means to understand and be able to
participate in culture according to underlying values in culture. The reasons and justifications
for this are often hidden and taken for granted. In a situation where this indisputable role of
literature is being challenged, the need for understanding the function of literature in
language classrooms has become more urgent and the need for describing and analyzing why
literature is important in these contexts seem to be a new challenge for teachers and
curriculum designers. The justification for literature may range from utilitarian arguments to
great expectations for development of national, cultural or personal identities. The main
linkage of the following debate owns its departure point from the view that some of the
elements of a text such as the linguistic choices woven in a text and the ideological
orientations of the producer/s of the text can tremendously converge and eventually cooperate
in conveying the underlying message/s in a text across.
The current study presents some assumptions of how text and literature functions within
the frame of Stylistic Devices which is an umbrella term for the already referred to as the
linguistic choices as an off-spring of the text producer’s ideological orientations in a
pedagogic perspective. This study will also examine the concept of Stylistic Analysis and
suggest different ways of justifying literature in contexts in which Stylistic Analysis plays an
important part and briefly discuss how concepts like text and literature are understood in
different ways.
In Text Analysis the rationale of scrupulous analysis is to detect and catalogue the
linguistic elements being exploited. This scrupulous analysis is regarded as a competent way
in studying literary texts, too. In literary studies the rationale is usually an adjunct to
understanding, and interpretation; so an extremely detailed attention is paid to the text. One
of the ways to detect the hidden meanings in literary texts is to manipulate the foregrounding
model. Foregrounding model in text analysis aids us with the implementation of the 'Stylistic
Analysis’ to detect the message engineered into the text by the author. Linguistic choices in
Stylistic Analysis do carry substantial values in elucidating inherent and prevailing
ideologies; these ideologies are foregrounded by digressions exploited in the linguistic
choices. It is with investigating these digressions that one can go beyond the textual level and
draw the ideology that the author has engineered into the related text. In this study the
outcome is to see how these digressions by the author act in creating the transmission of the
certain message to the reader in a narrative and eventually detect the existing relative rules
among those digressions. As a consequence, a very central question can address the present
study: Are these rules guiding the operation of the language?
Leech and Short (1995:39) believe that every stylistic analysis involves selecting some
features, and ignoring others. It is a highly selective exercise, which may be one feature or a
number of features. The stylistic selection involves the relation between the significances of a
text and the linguistic characteristics in which the significances are manifest. Two criteria are
therefore involved: a literary criterion and a linguistic criterion. A combination of linguistic
discrimination and literary discrimination gives us those particular features of style, which
call for more careful investigation. Such important features we regard as style markers.
Leech and Short (1995:86) also provide for the linguistic Stylistician a checklist of style
markers in four categories: the lexical category, the grammatical category, the figures of
speech and the context and cohesion category. Under these categories, the authors list the
following sub-parts:
A. Lexical Categories:
i) General, ii) Nouns, iii) Adjectives, iv) Verbs, v) Adverbs.
B. Grammatical Category:
i) Sentence types, ii) Sentence complexity, iii) Clause types, iv) clause structure, v) noun
phrases, vi) verb phrases, vii) other phrase types, viii) word classes, ix) general – here, note
any general types of grammatical construction used to special effect.
C. Figures of Speech, etc.:
i) grammatical and lexical schemes, ii) phonological schemes, iii) tropes.
D. Context and Cohesion:
Consider ways in which one part of a text is linked to another (cohesion) and whether the
writer addresses the reader directly, or through the words or thoughts of some other character.
Crystal and Davy (1980:137) writing on ‘the concern of stylistics’ in Investigating English
Style say that the aim of stylistics is to analyze language habits so as to identify from an array
of linguistic features common to English, those features restricted to certain kinds of social
context. It also aims at explaining why such features have been used. It classifies the features
into categories based on their function in the social context. Crystal and Davy (1980:59)
believe:
The Stylisticians, ideally, knows three things which linguistically untrained people do not;
he is aware of the kind of structure language has, and thus the kind of feature which might be
expected to be of stylistic significance; he is aware of the kind of social variation which
linguistic features tend to be identified with; and he has a technique of putting these features
down on paper in a systematic way in order to display their internal patterning to maximal
effect.
Crystal and Davy (1980:64-76) also outline the methodology of describing the linguistic
features of a text. These are aspects of the 'theoretical preliminaries' of the book. The second
part of the book dwells on practical analyses of the language of conversation, that of
unscripted commentary, the language of religion, newspaper reporting, legal documents.
Further on, Crystal and Davy (1980:97) assert that the process of stylistic analysis we are
recommending is therefore one in which ordered selection and comment are carried out
within parallel frameworks, one stylistic, and the other linguistic. The stylistic framework
contains the dimensions of description and their sub classification; the linguistic framework
contains the levels of analysis and their sub-classification. There are two distinct places
where stylistic decisions enter into the analysis: at the beginning, when they may be used
intuitively, as the motivation for selecting a text and a set of linguistic features to talk about;
and at the end, when the aim is to formalize intuitions by establishing the entire range of
linguistic correlates, and by pointing to the pattern which is felt to be there. The process
should enable statements to be made about the range of varieties which exist within a
language, and thus provide a basis for comparing languages from a stylistic point of view.
In this research, Charles Dickens's story "Oliver Twist" is going to be analyzed and the
focus of analysis are the stylistic devices he has exploited to create meaning. This research
also hopes to act as a reference point for students interested in researching into linguistic
stylistics, fulfilling this, the teachers of the literary novels may save time and take a journey
in some preliminaries in linguistic stylistics to enjoy their teaching and be more beneficial to
their students. Therefore, to enhance their current understanding of teaching narratives in
Reading Course by conceptualizing the fact that how they can expand their potential to
interpret and analyze this narrative text, relying on the existing lexico-semantic features in the
created context by the author of the novel i.e. the 'how' and the 'what' of the author's narration
style on Reading Skill in particularity.
2. What is stylistics?
Stylistics is studying the variation that can be found in texts. Linguistics is the academic
discipline that studies language scientifically and stylistics as a part of this discipline studies
certain aspects of language variation.
According to Leech (1981) Stylistics is a method about the style of language. According
to Simpson (1993), the definition of stylistics is a method of textual interpretation in which
primacy of place is assigned to language. Style is the use of the language in a certain context,
by a certain people and for a certain reason. Style is different from structural grammar. It
cannot be quantified, it has no rules. Style impacts to writing, strengthens the contact with the
reader and heightens their awareness. Therefore, style is always concerned with relationship
between the participants in a certain situation.
By this definition we can easily get the point that stylistics has a packet of tools that has
borrowed from Linguistics and uses these tools in investigating the texts especially literary
texts. That’s why during these recent years literary analysts have been fond of stylistics to
interpret and criticize texts. As mentioned above stylistics is not alone and takes some
theories and models or frameworks from Linguistics. The best known model that recently has
been popular and used by many analysts is Leech's "Foregrounding Theory"
3. What is Foregrounding Theory?
There is a need to convince the readers of the present study on how and why the specific
theory (model) appropriate for analyzing the narrative 'Oliver Twist' was found and
consequently what can the outcomes of this choice of decision reveal to the readers. The
following paragraphs will present and support our choice of decision in full details. Also, the
accounts of the selected theories will be presented, respectively.
The main part of any study of literature is considered to be the theory of 'foregrounding'.
The term refers to specific linguistic devices, i.e., deviation and parallelism that are used in
literary texts in a functional and condensed way. Foregrounding theory was seen as a means
of explaining the difference between literary and everyday language which has become
widely accepted as one of the foundations of stylistics. The term 'foregrounding' may be used
in a purely linguistic sense. It then refers to new information, in contrast to elements in the
sentence which form the background against which the new elements are to be understood by
the listener / reader.
According to the theory of foregrounding it is viewed as a deviation of literature where the
employment of unusual forms of language breaks up the reader's routine behavior.
Commonplace views and perspectives are replaced by new and surprising insights and
sensations. In this way literature keeps or makes individuals aware of their automatized
actions and preconceptions. It thus contributes to general creativity and development in
societies. The theory of foregrounding is also one of the few literary theories which has been
tested empirically for its validity. Within literature, foregrounding is represented through
devices: deviation and parallelism. Deviation corresponds to the traditional idea of poetic
license: the writer of literature is allowed - in contrast to the everyday speaker - to deviate
from rules, maxims, or conventions. These may involve the language, as well as literary
traditions or expectations set up by the text itself. The result is some degree of surprise in the
reader, and his / her attention is thereby drawn to the form of the text itself rather than to its
content. Cases of neologism, live metaphor, or ungrammatical sentences, as well as
archaisms, paradox, and oxymoron (the traditional tropes) are clear examples of deviation. In
linguistic literature types of deviation are also discussed. I. Genienė (2003:65) distinguishes
two types of deviation: code-regular and code-irregular. The first grouping presents less
difficulty in decoding whereas the second ones are more unusual and require greater effort to
decode or interpret (e.g. stream of consciousness’ technique).
Devices of parallelism are characterized by repetitive structures. Traditional handbooks of
poetics and rhetoric have surveyed and described a wide variety of such forms of parallelism,
e.g., rhyme, assonance, alliteration, meter, semantic symmetry, or antistrophe. Any piece of
literal discourse maybe foregrounded on three levels:
1) Phonetic level, where such features as alliteration or rhyme may produce a slight "drag" on
reading, particularly if a reader engages in sub-vocal articulation. Such prolonged reflection
on phonetic features may allow realization of their feeling connotations. However the most
familiar form of sound-meaning is onomatopoeia, the imitation of a natural sound by a word
form: for example, the words hiss, miaow, or crack each appears to embody phoneme clusters
that sound similar to the event they name. In Hugh Bredin's recent study of this phenomenon,
he suggests that "onomatopoeia is not a trivial and incidental phenomenon of usage, but
answers to a deep-seated need that lies at the heart of the linguistic consciousness (Bredin
1996:560). The stylistic devices emerging on the phonetic basis are mostly met within the
poetic texts and provide the melodic effect to the utterance.
2) Grammatical level on the contrary deals not only with individual words but rather studies
the relationship between words, word combinations and sentences. The most prominent
features as inversion, repetition, parallel ellipsis have a code-regular tradition. However there
are many instances of grammatical code-irregular deviations resulting in frequent
comprehension difficulties. Deviations in normal syntax impede processing and increase
reading time. Extended reflection on those complexities may enable recognition of implicit
emphases or evaluations.
3) Semantic level proves that words in context, may acquire additional meaning not fixed in
the dictionary, which is usually called contextual meaning. Stylistic devices of a certain type
are used to denote phenomena that serve to create additional expressive, evaluative,
subjective connotations. Such features as metaphor, metonymy or irony may refer to less
salient attributes of textual referents. Lengthy reflection may be necessary to identify those
less salient – and often affective – attributes. Semantically deviant sentences are often
metaphorically interpreted. At first glance, identification of these instances would seem
unproblematic. Unfortunately, semantic deviation is always context sensitive. The
metaphorical and metonymical uses of language share the features of code-regular deviations
which are characteristic not only of literature but also of the mind’s characteristics workings
as a part of everyday speech (Genienė 2003).
The concepts of foregrounding and deviation have been made use of most in textual
analysis. They are a useful tool to describe particular characteristics of the text, or to explain
its specific poetic effects on the reader. And it may fruitfully be employed to establish a link
between purely linguistic description and the functioning literary texts in a culture at large.
Depending on the tradition that a researcher comes from, however, the focus of this inquiry
has been on exploring both the text and the context. Drawing from different approaches , the
present study employed the related research theory to explore the relation between the
linguistic structures and the related socially constructed meanings in the narrative "Oliver
Twist" relying on G. N. Leech's Theory of 'Levels of Language' on which Foregrounding
shadows to capture the linguistic choices from the novel and then break down the complexity
and oddity of those linguistic choices in this narrative for the readers to render the Charles
Dickens's style of writing.
4. Method
To do the research a text had to be chosen, so we chose a literary text to work on, of
course mostly because of the researchers’ interest in literary texts. A story was chosen, named
"Oliver Twist", a work by Charles Dickens. The reason we selected one of Dickens’s works
is his conscious writing style; one can be sure that the way he writes and the words he
chooses convey a message behind. 'Oliver Twist' was aimed at calling attention to the social
and economic pressures of poverty in the industrial world of England. 'Oliver Twist' is the
novel that asks most clearly to be read not as a mere fiction but as a commentary on a
contemporary crisis. Charles Dickens began writing the novel "Oliver Twist" published in
1830s. It has been tried to see whether this conclusion can be derived from discourse analysis
of the story. To do the analysis a framework was needed, so we decided to analyze it with
Leech's framework. G. N. Leech deals with eight different types of linguistic regression,
distinguishing the three main language levels: Realization, Form, and Semantics. Realization
is realized by Phonology and Graphology, and Form comprises Grammar and Lexicon, and
Semantics is (Denotative or Cognitive) Meaning. In this framework the semantic category
and then within this category the "Transference of Meaning" sub-category was chosen. It is
necessary to mention here that only the sub-category related to the "Transference f meaning"
was chosen. Then according to type of the category the data were grouped.
5. Results
In this section, we have tried to analyze the types of Linguistic deviations in Dickens's
"Oliver Twist", and the motives behind using such linguistic deviations thus, the stylistic
analysis have brought the following results: Phonological deviation includes the substandard
pronunciation and the substitution of sounds. Graphological deviation covers the use of
capitalization. Lexical deviation includes the nonce use, compounding, and malapropism
words. Grammatical deviation contains the confusion of affixes, comparison of adjectives,
multiple negations, and the misuse of the verbs. Semantic deviation which covers the three
levels, semantic oddity that includes periphrasis, transference of meaning including
synecdoche, metaphor, and simile, and honest deception includes the use of hyperbole and
irony.
We can say that the various uses of Linguistic Deviation helps Dickens to describe his
characters, and to show their social classes, therefore, it depicts the bitter reality of the
Industrial society as well as it represents a full picture of poor people to the readers. Also,
these deviations have a significance role in developing the event of the whole narrative.
Dickens through these linguistic deviations arise different issues related to the British society
in 19 century, as he suggests, social development such as socialism, where all men are equal
and discriminations between the poor and the rich should not be exist.
From these illustrations of deviation, it may be said that Dickens ingeniously creates his
own language, and skillfully manipulates it in his novel. English scientific and technical
vocabulary had been growing gradually since the Renaissance. These new expressions and
styles had an effect on the writers, especially those of fiction like, Charles Dickens. Dickens
uses words and expressions which indicate the philosophy of cruel society.
6. Discussion
Regarding English as a world language or language of wider communication, reading texts
in English takes on an interactive nature. Trying to understand a written text the reader has to
perform a number of simultaneous tasks: decode the message by recognizing the written
signs, interpret the message by assigning meaning to the string of words, and finally,
understand what the author's intention was. In this process there are at least three elements:
the writer, the text, and the reader.
In the narrative 'Oliver Twist', Charles Dickens, is distant in time and place from his
readers of the narrative text and from the act of reading. It was at the time of writing that the
author produced the text with the intention of transmitting a message to a potential reader,
and therefore, the dialog between the reader and the writer via the text can take place at any
time later. The issue captures some problems in interpreting the text for contemporary readers
in that it is difficult for them to understand some linguistically odd choices which have been
inserted in the narrative to be fitted and analyzed in the contemporary Standard English in the
21 century. Thus, it can be important to understand the nature of these odd devices and
cracking/decoding them to digest the writer's message encoded into the text and complete this
interactive process among the writer, the text and the reader to provide the novice readers
with enough information and turn them into effective readers.
A reading course designed for narrative text teaching and learning is inevitably goes
through a discourse-oriented approach. The supporting reasons to my claim are that the
benefits of such an orientation can be the learners' exposure to a variety of texts, genres,
content areas, and styles of writing. While engaging in the processing of such different texts
and in doing the accompanying activities, the curriculum designer can develop both the
knowledge component and the processing skills demanded. A discourse oriented course will
help the readers to become effective and autonomous, they can be aware of various
considerations and strategies involved in successful processing. It can also help them to make
decisions and choices before, during, and after their reading of the text and eventually
develop good strategies which can overcome linguistic deficiencies when dealing with
complicated narrative texts which have been produced in a distant place and time of their
existing environment. Such reading courses should provide activities that enable learners to
locate instances of obscure references, giving them the opportunity to practice identification
and utilization of such reference. They should also point out the grammatical features as tense
and aspect that help readers distinguish between the main parts of a story and the background.
Accordingly, text book writers and reading specialists have often suggested that readers guess
the meaning of unfamiliar words by using clues from the text, thus minimizing the use of
dictionaries. This strategy is useful and generally very effective and provides readers with
important shortcuts and increase decoding speed. It is only when reading independently,
according to self-defined needs and goals, those learners can develop truly effective reading
strategies.
Top-down processing is often referred to as the knowledge-driven or concept-driven
approach to a text and it consolidates all the elements that the reader brings to the reading
process. It is, in fact, a reader-bound approach that relies heavily on the reader's global
interpretation process. Imagine a reader comes across a piece of a text in the narrative 'Oliver
Twist' like this:
Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be
prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name,
there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and
in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to
repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of
the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of
this chapter.
Without a global knowledge or any other indication as to where the text might have
appeared originally, by whom it may have been written, and for what intention. Any reader
coming across this piece of text might employ all his knowledge concerning the '… to refrain
from mentioning ….. assign no factious name' or ' … the item of mortality…' On the basis of
his 'background knowledge', the reader might construct some initial hypotheses about the
writer including the conservatism in his writing style which imposes a kind of suspension into
the text and makes it more complicated for the reader . The effective reader can narrow down
and focus attention more specifically on the initial development of the '… to refrain from
mentioning ….. assign no fictious name' by understanding the meaning of 'a workhouse'
where the term implies a synonymous feature and establish a pragmatic cohesion to earlier
odd structures mentioned above. Here, the readers' task is quite clear, that is to detect these
discursive features and their pragmatic relations to shape or reshape his pragmatic knowledge
based on the schematic knowledge which different linguistic devices created by the writer
gives him as potential clues in the text.
Simultaneous with the top-down processing, readers utilize a bottom-up approach, also
known as data-driven processing, which is text bound and which relies heavily on linguistic
information(both semantic and syntactic in nature) available in the text. It is the
complementary utilization of the two types of processing that makes text interpretation
possible. Furthermore, it has been shown that good readers have excellent decoding skills and
can decode letters and words rapidly in a bottom-up process (Van Dijk, 1977).
In the following bit of the text from the narrative 'Oliver Twist', the effective readers must
be able to recognize some of the key words and their exact meanings ungrateful lest in order
to understand the point being made by the author:
‘Well! Of all the ungratefullest, and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Oliver, you are
the —’
If the reader of this bit of text do not know the current Standard English in nineteen
century well in superlative adjectives category, he will have to depend more heavily on topdown strategies and makes use of his knowledge that is the current Standard English (SE) in
his existing age in order to understand this chunk, but this analogy is confusing and makes
him confused. The problem can be easily solved understanding the fact that to make his
superlative twofold in emphasis, Mr. Bumble uses a double superlative. The fact is that these
types of linguistic odd features are found neither in 19 century SE nor in 21 century SE. This
is a matter of conventionality which any writer can own and apply in his production of a
piece of a text.
As teaching tools, familiarity with Leech's deviated linguistic features are also quite
effective in curriculum design and need analysis for students of literature particularly in
turning surface differences into underlying similarities. Many educators have argued that the
central issue in teaching today is the following question: "In a world of seemingly
irreconcilable differences, how do we learn to understand and respect those differences?"
(Kern 2000: 6). However, the question should be reformulated and that instead of
emphasizing apparent differences teachers and students should and can use the classroom to
discover shared similarities. What is needed is not a multicultural but an intercultural
approach to teaching and learning. Thus, it serves as an excellent illustration of the
pedagogical flexibility that stylistics can provide because it allows the teaching of both
linguistics and literature at the same time.
For instance, when dealing with:
The day passed off. Day? There was no day; it was gone as soon as come—and night
came on again; night so long, and yet so short; long in its dreadful silence, and short
in its fleeting hours.
Readers often face a dilemma with respect to the plausibility of the message or the
information presented in this text, when perceived from their own point of view. In these
cases they should detect a match or technically put 'cohesion' both at the sentence and suprasentence levels between the readers' view and the view that seems to be presented in the text.
Based on his schematic knowledge of a character like Fagin in the story and the situation in
which he had stuck in this sentence, an effective reader would immediately understand that
his fear in prison awaiting the time of execution is concisely condensed into the paradox:
“night so long, and yet so short.” the readers find such a cohesion, the interaction between
text and context well in advancing the interpretation of the text. Thus, having a thorough
knowledge of what Leech has proposed as semantic oddity in his theory of foregrounding
within which paradox (contradiction) is categorized as a linguistic device can foster the
process of an effective reading and be utilized to decode the encoded message of the writer
who tries to substantiate the reality of the kind of condition in which Fagin is. It is
appropriate, for the English Literature teachers, to analyze the nature of a foregrounded
linguistic feature like paradox (contradiction) in the classroom and uncover more details of
the effectiveness of having thorough knowledge in the related area.
6.1 Implications
The present study does not only aim at theoretical findings, but more importantly, it is
hoped to utilize these results to apply in reality. With respect to this intention, the study can
have the following pedagogic implications:
First, the findings provide the narrative curriculum designers, in particular the English
Literature teachers in universities, with a useful tool to devise a curriculum in terms of
Leech's three Levels of Language Model (Foregrounding Theory). In this way it helps them
to discover some of the features of different types of texts, which are very important for the
understanding of narrative texts that is devising stylistic – based courses as pre- requisite
courses to teaching literary prose and fiction in order to level the maze of which the students
encounter reading these texts.
Second, this curriculum is extremely helpful in helping students develop their language
skills, especially those of Reading and Writing, which involve a good understanding of
logical and semantic relation between elements in a narrative, and more broadly, in different
types of texts.( See Appendix A for a related lesson plan sample)
Reference
Crystal, D.(1979). Investigating English Style. London: Longman.
Crystal, D. and Davy D.(1980). Investigating English Style. London: Longman.
Crystal, D.(1998). Language Play. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Dickens, C. (1830). Oliver Twist. Edited by Kathleen Tillotson. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Geniene, I.(2003). Foregrounding and Deviation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnston, B. (2008) Discourse Analysis. United Kingdom: Blackwell.
Kern, R. (2000). Literacy and Language Teaching. Oxford University Press.
Leech, G.N. (1969). A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London: Longman.
Leech, G. and M. Short (1981) Style in Fiction. Harlow: Pearson.
Leech, G. (1983), Principles of Pragmatics, London: Longman.
Leech, N.G. and Short, M. H. (1995) Style in Fiction:A Linguistic Introduction to English
Fictional Prose. New York: Longman.
Leech, G. (1999). A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London: Longman
Leech, G.N. (2003). Style in Fiction. New York: Longman.
Schiffrin, D. (1994) Approaches to Discourse. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Schiffrin, D. et al. (2003) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London: Blackwell.
Simpson, P. (1993) Language Through Literature: An Introduction. Routledge: London
Simpson, P. (2004) Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Van Dijk, T. (1977). Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of
Discourse. London: Longman.
Appendix A) A related lesson plan sample
Lesson Plan for chapter 1, the Novel Oliver Twist
Credit Hour: 120 minutes
A) PREPARATION (15 min.)
The teacher can prepare the background knowledge necessary for today's reading:
1- The teacher can ask the students if they know anything about Charles Dickens's
Contemporary England. Showing them a map from the novel and explain where it is.
2- The teacher can show the novel 'Oliver Twist' and elicit any predictions given the front
cover which is a portrait of an innocent poor boy drinking watery soup.
3- The teacher can ask them and discuss what they think that means. Why would an author
dedicate a book to kids? How would poverty be different for kids than for adults?
4- The teacher can introduce Charles Dickens as the writer of this novel briefly.
B) WARM-UP (10 min.)
1- The teacher can read background information on the Novel from the back of the book.
2- The teacher can introduce some important stylistic devices from today's reading. Such as:
workus, cuffed and buffeted, despised by all and pitted by none.
3-The teacher can say, explain, and expand about them briefly.
C) READING (25 min.)
-The students can be asked to skim the text and locate the related stylistic features in their
contexts.
-The teacher can ask them to start at the beginning and review the story so far and mention
the setting and main character and point.
D) POST- READING (30 min.)
1-The class can discuss the reading and add some other events. While discussing the teacher
can ask them to debate the story to fix the facts prompting the questions of: who, what,
when, where, why.
1-The teacher might ask the students to decide some most important events and add these to
their own new story relying on the stylistic devices introduced. Students might mention:
-Changes from the beginning of the chapter to the end.
-Chronological events from the baby's birth time to his first cry.
E)EXPLORING(40 min.)
1-The students can be asked to explore the story with written language activities as a draft for
the up-coming related essay on which the stylistic devices shed light to re-contextualizes this
part of the story prompting them to prepare and devise the structure and layout of their
essays.
Student Activity: Fill in the blanks.
a) A related paper is one where the first part of the paper:
(Here the students are asked to think of what kind of introductory paragraph they can
engineer to begin a related essay.)
b) The second part of the paper:
(Here the students are asked to think of what kind of introductory paragraph the can
engineer to the main events and details to the related essay.)
c) The end of the paper:
(Here the students are asked to draw a conclusion to the related essay.)
2-However the teacher can prompt the activity putting some key questions to be answered by
the related stylistic devices as key parts of the essay on the board:
- How has Charles Dickens illustrated the setting of the story in the opening paragraph?
- How has Charles Dickens exemplified the circumstances attending Oliver's birth scene?
- How has Charles Dickens wrapped up the introductory chapter of the novel?
F) ASSIGNMEMNTS(5 min.)
-The teacher can prompt every student to write a likewise short product highlighting the
insertion of the stylistic devices they have grasped from the first chapter for next session. The
students are asked to extend the reading to the real lives in the world.