Stylistics
This Web page has information to help researchers find materials related to stylistics. Students in E507 will find it of particular interest, but anyone doing research on the topic should find it useful. Some linguistic devices of stylistic interest (as identified by Prof. Don Hardy in his syllabus for the course) are:
| relative clauses semantic fields modality metonymy negation |
presupposition adverbial clauses speech/thought representation politeness metaphor |
entailment participial phrases tense/aspect speech acts verb complements |
transitivity prepositional phrases deixis simile repetition |
Types of methodologies include "corpus analysis, statistical analysis, and/or intuitional analysis." Electronic mechanisms are used to analyze text for "linguistic patterns such as speech and thought representation; subordination and backgrounding; narrative structure; and word choice" (Hardy, syllabus).
Reference Books | Books | Articles | Web (3 divisions) | Journals
Reference Books
The following reference books are useful for definitions. In some cases they provide lengthy examples and explanations of concepts.
- A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. P 152 .T7 1993 REF
- A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 5th ed. P 29 .C65 2003 REF
- A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology. P 216 .T73 1996 REF
- A Dictionary of Stylistics. P 301 .W35 1989 REF
- Concise Encyclopedia of Grammatical Categories. P 240.5 .C66 1999 REF
- Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics. P 99.4 .P72 C62 1998 REF
- The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 10 vols. P 29 .E48 1994 REF
- International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. 4 vols. P 29 .I58 2003 REF
- Linguistics Encyclopedia. P 29 .L52 2002 REF
- A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. P 29 .T69 1997 REF
Books
There are books that discuss theory, grammar, corpus linguistics, research design and statistics, semantics and pragmatics, stylistics, and discourse analysis. Students in E507 have a nice bibliography of resources on their syllabus. Additional items may be identified in SAGE, the library catalog using the subject terms listed below (for researchers not in the course, these subject headings will include the listed items in the search results, unless CSU doesn't own that particular title). Items may be requested from other libraries in Prospector, the Colorado Union Catalog, by Colorado State University affiliates and library card holders (establish a PIN in SAGE first). Do a LC Subject (Subject) search for these terms in SAGE (and Prospector) to identify books about these topics. Some subject heading appear in more than one category.
Theory: Discourse Analysis: |
Semantics and Pragmatics: Stylistics: Research Design and Statistics: English Grammar: |
Articles
The indexes most useful for finding information on stylistics are MLA Bibliography, Academic Search Premier, Humanities Abstracts, and Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts.
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Search the MLA Bibliography for articles, book chapters, etc. After finding a citation, check SAGE to see if CSU owns the journal or book.
To find examples of stylistics analyses, search MLA for one of the following terms and the work or author you are interested in examining:
dialogue
indirect speech
irony
language
linguistic approach
literary theory and criticism
metaphor
middle voice
narration
narrative technique
of knowledge
presupposition
relationship to empathy
relationship to limits
relationship to linguistics
relationship to negation
relationship to presupposition
relationship to semantics
relationship to verb class
style
stylistics
treatment of knowledge
You can limit your search by publication type from the initial search screen. Get there by clicking on "Search Options" tab if you have already done a search. Publication types are: Book; Book Article; Book Collection; Dissertation Abstract; Journal Article. The left example below shows a search limited to journal articles. You can also exclude dissertations from a general search (right example).
You can also limit your search by language of the article by scrolling and selecting your choice:
You may select more than one language; just use the Ctrl key to choose languages that are not sequential:
Once you set limits, they will stay as long as you do new searches in the main search box (
shows just above entries for search results). If you return to
it erases your previous limits, so if you intend to add something new, you will need to remember to repeat your earlier limits.
Always look at the full record of any source of interest. It will help you identify terms that will be useful for finding additional sources:
For additional MLA searching tips see Flannery O'Connor, Articles.
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Same software as MLA above. There are over nearly 800 records on pragmatics in Academic Search Premier. Some of the records are for a more general audience than MLA, and may be very useful. You can also limit your results, under "search options," to scholarly articles (this option is not found in MLA--generally speaking, everything in MLA is scholarly).
To find examples of stylistics analyses, search Academic Search Premier for:
*Fiction -- Technique
*Grammar, Comparative & General -- Middle Voice
*Information Theory
*Language & Languages -- Grammars
*Language & Languages -- Style*Metaphor
*Pragmatics
*Presupposition (Logic)
*Semantics
*Voice
The key subject heading for stylistics in Academic Search Premier is Language & Languages -- Style.
- Humanities International Index. Varies. (Different publisher, similar subject coverage: Humanties Index AI 3 .I495 Reference South 1974-98)
Over 60 articles are about Literature & technology in the online database. The following subject terms (default search "Select a field" will not work for some of these) will find items on stylistics topics:
Discourse analysis, literary
English language--Verb
Electronic data processing
Knowledge, theory of
Language & languages -- Style
Presupposition (Logic)
Style, Literary
Style, Literary and [author name]
Vision in literature
- Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts. 1973- . Monthy updates.
A very useful indexing source for stylistics. The following are some of the useful related subjects in this database:*Auxiliary Verbs
*Conversation
*Corpus Linguistics
*Discourse Analysis
*Dyadic Interaction
*Fiction
*Foregrounding
*Literary Criticism
*Literary Language
*Morphology
*Narrative Structure
*Negation
*Orthography Reform
*Politeness
*Presuppositions
*Propositions
*Religious Language
*Semantic Roles
*Semantics
*Spoken Written Language Relationship
*Stylistics
*Syntax Semantics Relationship
*Text Analysis
*Voice (Grammatical)If you already know which subject you are going to use (e.g. one of the terms listed directly above), do a subject or descriptor search for it:
Limit your search if you know you only want articles published in specific years or articles from journals:
Other options include identifying articles in English only and sorting by date or relevancy.After looking at the search results you might decide to modify your search. You can either go back to the initial search screen via the
button, or do a new search in the upper left hand edit search box: 
Notice that "literary criticism" is within parenthesis, which keeps the phrase as a descriptor term.As always, get ideas for additional descriptor terms (i.e. new searches) from the subject headings of relevant articles:
All of the above indexes are FindIt (SFX) enabled. See Note from Step 3 of "How to Find Journal Articles" for a brief description of this tool. See Step 4 for Citation Linker information, an extremely useful tool if you have a printed bibligraphy and you want to find out if CSU has an electronic version of any of the articles listed therein.
Web
The following resources are of interest to researchers investigating stylistics and related corpus linguistics topics.
Definitions has definitions of both stylistics and language & linguistics terms. Bibliographies & Links has links to lists of sources; check SAGE (and/or the Citation Linker) to see if CSU owns a specific book or article.Groups and Organizations has links to organizations and a topical listserv.
Definitions
A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples. Ross Scaife (Ernest Ament). Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures, & Cultures. University of Kentucky.
Definitions of 45 rhetorical terms.
Glossary of Literary Theory: Index of Primary Entries. Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown. University of Toronto English Library.
Page has terms listed A-Z list (most letters) with definitions, including "stylistics."
Lexicon of Linguistics. Jan Don, Johan Kerstens, Eddy Ruys. Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS. Utrecht University. Copyright © 1996-1999
Terms defined. By letter of alphabet or by keyword. One definition per page.
Stylistics. From English Language 2.0: an introduction to basics. Copyright © Mantex 1999.
Gives clear definition of "stylistics" with examples (street sign and opening of Shakespeare play). From Britain.
Stylistics. John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Copyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lengthy definition of the term with an extensive bibliography.
Systematic Dictionary of Corpus Linguistics. Vytauto Didžiojo Universitetas. © 1998-2002 Kompiuterines lingvistikos centras.
A large number of definitions--in English. Grouped into broad categories.
Words of Art. © Copyright 1996-2005 Robert Belton. The University of British Columbia. Okanagan, Canada.
Look for terms by their first letter, A-Z. Some definitions have links to other terms defined within the glossary.
Bibliographies (Lists of Sources on Stylistics) & Links
Bookmarks for Corpus-based Linguists. David Lee.
Corpora, Collections, Data Archives; Courses, FAQs, Info, E-Lists, Standards; Software, Tools, Freq Lists, etc.; References, Papers, Journals; Teaching & Miscellaneous Links; People, and Places & Conferences Index. Extensive. Key site.
Corpus Annotation. University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language. Lancaster University.
Promotes and provides examples of corpus services provided by Lancaster University. Shown are: Part-of-speech (POS) tagging; Grammatical parsing; Word sense tagging; Anaphoric annotation; and Prosodic annotation.
Corpus Linguistics. Tony McEnery and Andrew Wilson. Department of Linguistics. Lancaster University.
Supplement for the book with same title published by Edinburgh University Press (P98 .M325 1996 Morgan). Section one covers: Early corpus linguistics; Chomsky; The non-finite nature of language; The value of introspection; Other criticisms of corpus linguistics; Chomsky re-examined; The revival of corpus linguistics; Processes in corpus linguistics; Goals and conclusion; and has References; Further reading; and Glossary. Section two covers: Definition of a corpus; Encoding and Annotation; Formats of annotation; Textual information; Orthography; Types of annotation; and Multilingual corpora. Section three covers: Qualitative vs Quantitative analysis; Representativeness; Frequency counts; Proportions; Significance testing; Collocations; Multiple variables; and Loglinear models. Section four covers: Corpora in Speech Research; Corpora in Lexical Studies; Corpora and Grammar; Corpora and Semantics; Corpora and Pragmatics; Corpora and Sociolinguistics; Corpora and Stylistics; Corpora and Language Teaching; Corpora and Historical Linguistics; Corpora in Dialectology; Corpora in Psycholinguistics; Corpora and Cultural Studies; and Corpora and Social Psychology. Note: CSU owns other books by these authors.
Corpora and Corpus-based Computational Linguistics: Manuel Barbera's Web Resources Reference Guide. Michael Barlow. bManuel.org. Languages, computers and humanities.
Bibliography arranged by author. Additional materials of possible interest via main Web site, linked to just above.
Text Corpora and Corpus Linguistics. Michael Barlow.
Left side has categories of topics such as corpora, parallel corpora, learner corpora, etc. Links off.
Gateway to Corpus Linguistics on the Internet. Yvonne Breyer. University of Essen. Germany. © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Webmaster Corpus Linguistics.
"[A]nnotated reference system to find everything related to Corpus Linguistics that is available on the Internet: Corpora, Concordances, DDL materials, Corpus Linguistics research and events, software for tagging, annotation etc." Extensive.A Logical Approach to Computational Corpus Linguistics. Torbjörn Lager. Professor of General and Computational Linguistics. Department of Linguistics. Göteborg University. Sweden.
Links to abstract of thesis (doctoral dissertation) on the topic and then to Postscript and Acrobat formats (343 pages) of the thesis.
Links, Pragmatics, Stylistics, and Research Group. Lancaster University.
Links to six pragmatics, stylistics and related areas sites. Pragglejaz requires authorization to view. PALA link not current.
Semiotics. Martin Ryder. University of Colorado at Denver. School of Education.
A very extensive list. Page includes celebrities in semiotics, active writers, basics, resources, journals, topics, people, and general readings.
Style and Stylistics–Some Sources. Rebecca Moore Howard. Syracuse University.
Lengthy bibliography of books, book chapters, articles. Arranged by author.
Groups and Organizations
Association for Computers and the Humanities.
"T]he major professional society for people working in computer-aided research in literature and language studies, history, philosophy, and other humanities disciplines, and especially research involving the manipulation and analysis of textual materials." Page has links to affiliated associations, working paper bibliographies, events, and committee business.
Listserv. "Linguistics and Literature (Stylistics) mailing list is for persons interested in applying the methods of linguistics to the analysis of literature, and all schools of thought are welcome." The archives start with July 1997.
Poetics and Linguistics Association.
"[I]nternational academic association for those who work in stylistics, poetics, and associated fields of language and linguistics. Specific interests of PALA members include: narratology, literariness, literary linguistics, stylistics and pedagogy, critical discourse analysis, gender and writing, literary translation studies, lingusitics and philosophy, metaphor, cognition, pragmatics, text-linguistics, corpus linguistics," etc. the association's journal, Language and Literature, is owned by CSU from 1995- . (Call number PN 203 .L34; online 1999- .) Site has conference information and members-only materials.
Journals
The following journals are key sources for materials on stylistics. CSU has a current subscription to a few of them, but does not own all of them or all the years available for others. Ownership or lack thereof is noted.
Computers and the Humanities. CSU owns Vols. 1-7,10-12 (1966/1967-1972/1973,1976-1978); location is Storage. Request specific volume needed through SAGE.
See tables of content for Vol. 31 1997- . Reports "on significant new research concerning the application of computer methods to humanities scholarship."
Journal of Literary Semantics. CSU owns Vols. 6-8,13-30 (1977-1979,1984-2001); location is Storage. Request specific volume needed through SAGE.
"The aim of the JOURNAL OF LITERARY SEMANTICS is to concentrate the endeavours of theoretical linguistics upon those texts traditionally classed as ‘literary’, in the belief that such texts are a central, not a peripheral, concern of linguistics."
Language and Literature. CSU owns Vol. 5 1995- . PN 203 .L34. Recent issues in Journal Room; older volumes in Moveable Shelves. 1999- onwards available online through SAGE.
"[I]nternational journal covering the latest developments in stylistic analysis, the linguistic analysis of literature and related areas."
Literary and Linguistic Computing. Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for Literary & Linguistic Computing.
See abstracts for all articles beginning with vol. 1 (January 1986). Need to be a member to see full text articles (2001- ). Journal not owned by CSU. (CU Boulder has a current subscription.) "[P]ublishes material on all aspects of computing and information technology applied to literature and language research and teaching."
Poetics Today. CSU owns Vols 9- PN 45 .P585. Found in the Journal Room, Moveable Shelves, Project MUSE (current issues) and/or JSTOR (older issues); the latter two access through SAGE or via the Databases page.
Poetics Today: A Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication includes the "study of art, language in society, etc., cognitive psychology and semantics, since the study of literature cannot be devorced from such perspectives. Another important perspective is that of literary and cultural semiotics, and other approaches to cultural studies."
Style. CSU owns vol. 1, 1967- . PN 203 .S8. Recent issues in Journal Room; older volumes in Moveable Shelves.
Get tables of content online from 1991- .
In all cases, be sure to evaluate what you find, no matter the source: book, article, or Web page.
See also O'Connor, Milton, Chaucer, Poe, Dickinson & Wright, William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound (brief) and Shakespeare.