7. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND STYLISTICS

Abstract

This review focuses on contemporary work in discourse stylistics, defined here as that designated branch of stylistics which draws specifically on the techniques and methods of discourse analysis. The review acknowledges a key assumption in modern discourse stylistic research, namely that the distinction between ‘literary’ and ‘nonliterary’ discourse, if tenable at all, is drawn not on a purely linguistic basis but in terms of multiple intersections among texts, readers, institutions, and sociocultural contexts. In spanning studies of both literary and nonliterary discourse, therefore, the coverage of the present review is intended to reflect this axiom. It also attempts to foreground the diversity of method and approach in contemporary discourse stylistics. Given that the techniques of discourse analysis are themselves many and various, the survey seeks to cover stylistic work that offers productive applications of the many available models in pragmatics, conversation analysis, cognitive linguistics, speech act theory, and discourse psychology. Finally, in covering a selection of important monographs, articles, and book chapters, the review seeks both to highlight some of the critical, cultural, and ideological frameworks currently employed by discourse stylisticians and to demarcate, in more general terms, the current state-of-play in this research tradition.