Stylistics

Elena Semino & Jonathan Culpeper
Table of contents

Broadly speaking, stylistics is the study of style in language (e.g. Verdonk 2002: 3–4). Its focus is the way in which language varies under the influence of factors such as context, purpose, author and period. Traditionally, however, stylistics has tended to privilege texts that are valued for their artistic merit, i.e. literary works. It is indeed quite common for stylistics to be defined as the linguistic study of literature (e.g. ­Freeman 1981: 3; Simpson 1993: 3). Following Leech (1985), we will distinguish between literary stylistics and general stylistics.

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