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STYLISTICS LESSON 2 By Prof. Mike Kuria Source Stylistics: A Resource book for students by Paul Simpson. Lesson Plan. 1. Stylistics and levels of language 2. Grammar and style 3. Rhythm and metre 4. Dialogue and discourse 5. Cognitive stylistics etc.
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STYLISTICS LESSON 2 By Prof. Mike Kuria Source Stylistics: A Resource book for students by Paul Simpson
Lesson Plan • 1. Stylistics and levels of language • 2. Grammar and style • 3. Rhythm and metre • 4. Dialogue and discourse • 5. Cognitive stylistics etc
GRAMMAR AND STYLE Order from highest to the lowest. The sentence being the biggest and the morpheme being the lowest grammatical unit. The clause is the most important: It shows mood- declarative, interrogative, imperative Provides tense Positive and negative polarity( negation issues) Grammar consists of the following: (hierarchical) • The sentence (clause complex) • The clause • Phrase • Word • Morpheme
DEFINITIONS • A clause: group of sentences of related words containing a subject and a verb • I prefer the later train (independent) • Which leaves at three o’clock (dependent/ subordinate) • Close the door (independent/main) • When you go out (dependent/subordinate)
DEFINITIONS • The Phrase: Groups of words with a grammatical function: • Has been going- verb phrase • The sweet kid who lives next door- noun phrase • Greying and old - adjectival phrase.
STOP AND THINK • What would a concentration of the following in a piece of writing mean? • Interrogatives (detective series) • Declaratives (academics, informational) • Imperatives (legal and authoritative) • Exclamatory ( dramatic or emotional,usually punctuation rules do not apply)
RHYTHM AND METRE • Focus on phonology/phonetics • Sound patterning plays a pivotal role in literary discourse • Rhythm and metre have an important bearing on the structure and interpretation of poetry
METRE AND RYTHM • Metre defined: an organized pattern of strong and weak syllables. • Metrical patterning should be organized • Such that the alternation between strong and weak syllables is repeated • The regularity in repetition is what constitutes RYTHM • RHYTHM defined: Patterned movement of pulses in time which is defined both byperiodicity and repetition • FOOT- basic unit of analysis in metrics. Refers to the span of weak and stressed syllables repeated regularly • Metrical feet determined by the following: • Number of stressed and unstressed syllables • The patterning: s/unstressed; unstressed/stressed; • Iambic- “de-dum” pattern while the trochaic is “dum-de”
Examples The plough/man home/ward plods/ his wea/ry way • Iambic pattern? • Iambic pentameter (since there are five iambs) Note if there had been: • Six iambs- iambic hexametre • Four iambs- iambic tetrametre • Three iambs- iambic trimetreetc NB: metre transcends lexico-grammar
Examples By the/ margin/, willow/ veil'd, Slide the heavy barges trail'd • Trochaic tetrametre pattern (stressed/unstressed pattern) O/ what is that/ sound which so/ thrills the ear • The O is kind of off beat • Rest falls into three beats- strong, weak, weak (Dactyle) • Dactylic trimetre
UNDERSTANDING DIALOGUE IN DRAMA: CONTEXT STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY • All naturally occurring language takes place in a context of use which can be divided into the following three basic categories: • Physical context: workplace, home environment, public area etc • Personal context: social and personal relationships of the interactants such as age, gender, group membership, social and institutional roles of speakers and hearers • Cognitive context: shared and background knowledge held by participants in action
WHAT WOULD BE THE REASONS FOR THESE CHOICES? • Could you lend me a hundrend shillings please? • Lend me five shillings • I don’t suppose you will be able to do this, but could you lend me 100 shillings please • The ATM is not working, so could you lend 100 shillings please? • I would really be eternally grateful to you for this- could you lend me a 100 shillings please?
COGNITIVE STYLISTICS • Shift from the writer to the reader • How mental process affect and are affected by our reading • Explores links between the human mind and the process of reading • Suggests that literature is a way of reading rather than a way of writing • Seeks to account for models or stores of knowledge that readers bring into a text before them
IDEALISED COGNITIVE MODEL (ICM) • Contains information about what is typical for us and it is a domain of knowledge that is brought into play for the processing and understanding of textual representations • What images do you have of the following concepts: • Church- The marriage ceremony was officiated in the church- how do we understand that sentence? Why our differences • Note that ICM keep being modified by new experience • ICMs are activated by minimal syntactic and lexical markers in text- Jeff Dunham the dead terrorist and the phrase “I kill you” • Metaphor and Metonymy play a key role in contemporary cognitive stylistics analysis.