Introduction: Pragmatic Literary Stylistics

Chapman, Siobhan; Clark, Billy

doi:10.1057/9781137023278_1

Cited by 11 publications

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“…This is exactly how literary works differ from everyday texts. According to Chapman and Clark (2014), novels are not written simply for readers to reach the most relevant implicated conclusions, which would be optimal relevance. They are also to be reread and pondered over.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interrelation of Character-Generated Implicature and Inter-Character Sentimentality: A Comparison of of Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ and Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’

Mohammadpanah

Hamzehei

2020

ALLS

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Inspired by the cognitive approach to characterisation and in view of relevance theory, this research attempted to outline a relevance-theoretic account of how affective attachment between fictional characters influences writers’ use of implicata through characters as part of inter-character discourse by defining cognitive processes into fictional characters as a pivotal element of implicit characterisation. Our attempt addressed the veracity of such an influence and the question whether awareness of the intensity degree of such sentimentality influences readers’ non-spontaneous interpretation of character-generated implicata and characters’ intention to actually execute relevant implicating. By adherence to defining cognitive processes into character discourse, we conducted an analysis on six samples of implicata exchanges within inter-character verbal discourse between the mutual parties of the primary affective attachment of the narrative, between the protagonist and another round character out of Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ and Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’. In every instance of character-generated implication, we found decisive facilitatory influence for awareness of three levels of calculable implicated conclusions, inter-character sentiment intensity, and characters’ communicative intents on readers' achieving what Furlong terms ‘maximal relevance’ through non-spontaneous interpretation of literary texts. Additionally, tracking the progression of inter-character sentiment intensity throughout the two narratives yielded strategic drops during the gradual formation of inter-character bonds employed mainly to demonstrate a mutual sense of fastidiousness in characters’ choice of a companion in romance and also strengthening the said bonds.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interrelation of Character-Generated Implicature and Inter-Character Sentimentality: A Comparison of of Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ and Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’

Mohammadpanah

Hamzehei

2020

ALLS

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“…In more recent years within the general stylistics community renewed interest has been directed towards bringing together and exploring the possible convergences between pragmatics and stylistics (Caink 2012;Chapman 2012Chapman , 2014Nahajec 2014;Panagiotidou 2014;Peplow 2014;Warner 2014). Such literature presents developments within a newly-formed field referred to by Chapman and Clark (2014) as "pragmatic literary stylistics", which aims to understand and explain how readings, interpretations and evaluations of literary texts "arise, develop and spread" (Chapman and Clark 2014:6). Specific relevance-theoretic contributions to this field include: Caink (2014); Clark (2012Clark ( , 2014; Furlong (2012Furlong ( , 2014; MacMahon (2012MacMahon ( , 2014aMacMahon ( , 2014b; and Schuldiner (2014).…”

Section: Relevance Theory and Stylistics: A General Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Poetic effects and visuospatial form: A relevance-theoretic perspective

Pinder¹

2021

Journal of Pragmatics

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Sperber and Wilson (1995:222) posit the term poetic effect for the peculiar effect of an utterance which achieves most of its relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures. Crucially, the input to pragmatic processing, which prompts the derivation of a poetic effect, is achieved via some stylistically pronounced linguistic feature: for example, a repeated lexical item, a peculiar syntactic form, a piece of alliteration, and so on. However, what has never been considered to any great depth from a relevancetheoretic perspective is how unusual elements of visuospatial form might also impact upon the reader's basic understanding and wider interpretation of a given poetic text in ways that result in the derivation of specialised poetic effects. Therefore, the thesis posits a relevance-theoretic account of the cognitive-pragmatic effects of short linelength and line divisions, when employed and interpreted within complex forms of poetry.The account is split into two hypotheses relating to short line-length and line divisions respectively. Hypothesis 1 states that the use of short line-length leads to the majority of the text's lexical material being perceived in a much slower, and therefore intense fashion, which consequently causes the lexical and encyclopaedic entries that such material links to within the mind to remain active for relatively longer periods of time. During such extended periods of lexical and encyclopaedic activation, literary readers are encouraged to inferentially process the text's explicit-propositional content in relation to a range of further items of encyclopaedic-contextual material, which can give rise to arrays of additional contextual effects of a weakly implicit and therefore poetic nature.Hypothesis 2 states that line divisions are often intentionally utilised in poetic texts by writers in order to visuospatially separate integral syntactic units upon the page. This can encourage readers to pause and briefly consider, upon an anticipatoryhypothetical basis, the various possible pragmatic extensions of the text's momentarily incomplete logical and propositional status, pre-line division as it were. The various pragmatic extensions may be formulated as arrays of weak explicatures, which for some readers may achieve poetic effects (in the specialised relevance-theoretic sense of the term). The process effectively constitutes the visuospatial equivalent of a deliberate 'pause for effect', which triggers a considerable degree of further inferential processing, and provides a distinct communicational 'reward' primarily at an explicit-propositional level.

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“…Pragmatics is a discipline with which stylistics shares crucial common ground; as Chapman and Clark explain, ‘pragmatics is an aspect of the study of language in use’ and literary stylistics ‘is the study of how close attention to language use can contribute to accounts of how texts are understood and evaluated’ (Chapman and Clark, 2014b: 1). Chapman and Clark (2014b) argue that the interaction between the two disciplines is best described as ‘pragmatic literary stylistics’ and some of the latest developments of this branch are presented in Chapman and Clark (2014a). Two chapters explore the stylistic effects created by what is not communicated in prose fiction, what is left unsaid.…”

Section: General Issues Of Stylementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The former incorporates insights from cognitive linguistics to appraise intertextuality; the latter uses empirical data to assess identity construction in reading groups. This collection certainly emphasises that pragmatics has a lot to offer stylistic studies but, equally, as the editors claim, that pragmatic literary stylistics ‘can constitute not only an application of specific pragmatic theories but also a way of shedding light on their nature and, to some extent, of testing them’ (Chapman and Clark 2014b: 7). Finally, Kizelbach (2014) adds a historical perspective to pragmatic principles for the analysis of literature and investigates the linguistic manifestation of power and kingship in some of Shakespeare’s history plays.…”

Section: General Issues Of Stylementioning

confidence: 99%

The Year’s Work in stylistics 2014

Montoro

2015

Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics

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Stylistics investigates style. A straightforward enough task, it might seem to the uninitiated. Stylisticians, on the other hand, see the investigation as a complex, diverse, intricate and sophisticated enterprise firmly grounded in linguistics. The question of how to define what style actually is does not, nor will it ever, have a simple answer. However, scholars whose work falls (in the strictest or loosest of senses) within the remit of stylistics concur as to how best to proceed when trying to account for it. For Simpson (2014: 4), stylistics' approach to style is primarily informed by the three 'Rs': Rigour, Retrievability and Replicability. Stockwell and Whiteley (2014: 1) emphasise that 'stylistics is the proper study of literature', meaning that it is 'delineated by rules and principles, and by reasonable, open and honest argument'. For Burke, stylistics 'is a kind of linguistic-forensic, literary discourse criticism' (Burke, 2014: 3). These three statements illustrate the defining methodological essence of the discipline: for as long as style is thoroughly, comprehensively and rigorously researched, stylisticians will openly and unashamedly make use of whichever analytical framework or theoretical tenets that can best account for it.The open embrace by stylistics of a variety of influences explicates its intrinsically interdisciplinary nature which, in turn, gives rise to fruitful and diverse research. The year 2014 has certainly not disappointed in that respect because it has witnessed the publication of diverse work from research on new text-types or genres (e.g. literary gaming) to research informed by corpus and multimodal approaches. As has been customary in previous Year's Work articles, the following pages have been divided into sections, each grouping together publications connected by similar interests, whether these are insights from cognate disciplines or particular analytical frameworks. Having said that, this division has a primarily explanatory function and should not be taken to indicate some hermetic compartmentalisation; in fact, as I go on to discuss, cross-fertilisation between the various research areas has been both bountiful and productive. General issues of styleThree key 2014 publications have already been referred to: Simpson's second edition of Stylistics (2014), Stockwell and Whiteley's The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics 596395L AL0010.1177/0963947015596395Language and LiteratureMontoro research-article2015 Review Article Language and Literature 24(4) (2014) and Burke's The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics (2014). The danger of reviewing Handbooks of the calibre of Stockwell and Whiteley's (2014) and Burke's ( 2014) is that, inevitably, the review is limited by space constraints. What follows is a humble attempt at describing these two collections which represent major contributions to the field as they significantly develop stylistics tenets by expanding on existing ideas (even in supposedly classic topics), by bringing in original and detailed text analyses or, indeed, by a...

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Introduction: Pragmatic Literary Stylistics

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Interrelation of Character-Generated Implicature and Inter-Character Sentimentality: A Comparison of of Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ and Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’

Interrelation of Character-Generated Implicature and Inter-Character Sentimentality: A Comparison of of Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ and Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’

Poetic effects and visuospatial form: A relevance-theoretic perspective

The Year’s Work in stylistics 2014

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