Stylistics

Oxford Introductions to Language Study

by Peter Verdonk, H.G. Widdowson (Series Editor)

This book deals with the study of style in language, how styles can be recognized, and their features. It examines how style is used in literary and non-literary texts, and how familiarity with style is a matter of socialization. The author also discusses the relationship between text and discourse, the production and reception of meaning as a dynamic contextualized interaction, the question of perspective and the variable representation of reality, and how stylistics can complement literary criticism. The final chapter deals with social reading and ideological positioning, including some thoughts on feminist stylistics and critical discourse analysis.

Genres: Linguistics, Literature

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 9, 2002

About the author

Peter Verdonk is Emeritus Professor of Stylistics at the University of Amsterdam, where he started teaching in the early 1970s, after a career in maritime law. His main interests lie in rhetoric, literary criticism, discourse analysis, narratology and cognitive poetics.

His books include Twentieth-century Poetry (Routledge 1993), Literature and the New Interdisciplinarity (with Roger D. Sell, Rodopi 1994), Twentieth-century Fiction (with Jean Jacques Weber, Routledge 1995), and Exploring the Language of Drama (with Jonathan Culpeper and Mick Short, Routledge 1998). His most recent book is Stylistics in the Oxford Introductions to Language Study series (Oxford University Press 2002).

He is a member of the editorial board of Language and Literature (Sage) and co-editor (with Gerard Steen en Willie van Peer) of the book series Linguistic Approaches to Literature (Benjamins). He is an honorary member of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA).

On his retirement, Peter Verdonk was honoured with a festschrift entitled Contextualized Stylistics, edited by Tony Bex, Michael Burke and Peter Stockwell (Rodopi 2000).

Reviews

[Laleh]

کتاب ساده‌ای است و ترجمهٔ بسیار روانی دارد. بخش واژگان و واژه‌نامه به سهولت خواندن این کتاب می‌افزاید. آقای غفاری معادل‌های بسیار خوبی را برگزیده است. از خواندنش لذت بردم.
.....
در صفحهٔ ۶۷ و ۹۰ اشکال چاپی وجود دارد.

[Najla.]

I started reading this book as a revision for the first chapter but ended up finishing it in 3 hours, Verdonk explains style in language in an interesting way, the choice of poems in the book is great as well. I'd recommend it for translators to be or anyone who wants to have a brief idea about the language of literature.

[Madawi]

homework

[Ahmed]

Short booklet full of ideas. It is really good. I wouldn't say I enjoyed reading it which I did sometimes, but I would openly say that it really opened my mind to new ways of looking at literary texts. It opened my mind to new angles of language I didn't have before. The booklet blends my two favorite fields of English which are Literature and Linguistics into a tasty smoothie.

It has some issues like the confusing use of terms. It confused me a bit when it comes to literary terminology, but the good thing is that it has glossary at the end of it.

[Nc]

In order to get familiar with basis of structuralism I recommend you to read this book