English stylistics
(Fall 2015/16)
Topic/discourse
1
Model/approach
Discourse-specific
general
Halliday´s language as a social semiotic
2
3
register
(field, tenor, mode)
casual conversation
Narration
Conversation Analysis
Labov´s model of narration
4
discussion board, e-mail, twitter
´Cconversation´ in the new media
5
Interview
Speech act theory (Austin and Searle)
6
news reporting
7
8
argumentation
advertising
Galtung and Ruge´s news values
Bell´s news item as a story
News pyramid
Toulmin´s model of argumentation
Synthetising all above
Linguo-stylistics
Functions of language
(Halliday, Jakobson)
Multimodality
Media theory
Politeness
Schema theory Cognitive
metaphor
Cohesion and coherence
The summary of what we have been doing in seminars:
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each use of language is approached as a discourse = as a communicative event which
o performs certain functions within a particular domain of social life → FIELD
o involves people who are related in some way → TENOR
o uses primarily (spoken, written, typed, printed …) language as a technology → MODE
we observed that language is central, but not the only semiotic system → MULTIMODALITY
we emphasised the functional perspective of language as primary → FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
but we also used a systemic perspective of language as a rich repository of expressive resources →
LINGUO-STYLISTICS
we chose discourses for analysis from the spoken-to-written continuum, with conversation being the
prototype for all other types of discourses
depending on the type discourse, we used different models to understand how language works
we used the worksheets to note down the most salient choices made in individual discourses; we
focused on
o the material substance used → phonology/graphology
o form and meaning → grammar: morpho-syntax, lexicon
o discourse-particular features → discourse
o other communicative resources → paralanguage
finally, we tried to synthetise our findings and see them work together
Perhaps we are now ready to use this procedure to analyse – and understand - ANY type of
communication.