Wales - A Dictionary of Stylistics

A Dictionary of Stylistics

A Dictionary of Stylistics

Third Edition

KATIE WALES

First published 1990 by Longman Group Limited

Second edition published 2001

Third edition published 2011

Published 2014 by Routledge

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Copyright 1990, 2001, 2011, Taylor & Francis.

The right of Katie Wales to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4082-3115-9 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wales, Katie.

A dictionary of stylistics / Katie Wales. 3rd ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4082-3115-9 (pbk.)

1. Language and languagesStyleHandbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Style, LiteraryHandbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.

P301.W35 2011

808.0203dc22

2011003290

Typeset in 10.5/13pt Minion by 35

Conte nts

It is now ten years since the second edition of this Dictionary of Stylistics appeared, and over twenty years since the publication of the first. There are other significant milestones, which readers new to the subject, and to this work, might appreciate. It is now just over a hundred years since the Swiss scholar Charles Bally, a student of Ferdinand de Saussure, produced his Trait de stylistique franaise (1909) and so launched a new discipline in Europe. Some fifty years ago the Russian emigrant Roman Jakobson justified the linguistic study of verbal art at a conference in Indiana (published 1960), and so promoted stylistics in the USA. It is just over forty years since Geoffrey Leech published his Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (1969), which helped to popularize stylistics in the UK. His work built a bridge between Western and Eastern Europe, in its creative application of Russian Formalism. It is also just over thirty years since the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) was founded in the UK (1980), now with members all over the world; and almost twenty years since its journal of stylistics was first published (1992), Language and Literature. Throughout this long period stylistics has remained true to its general principle of the analysis of linguistic and textual features for the purpose of interpretation and appreciation, for nonliterary as well as literary texts.

In one important sense this dictionary then is an archive: a history of stylistics, its interdisciplinary influences and its successive or co-occurring obsessions and turns. In so far as it is possible, I have tried to indicate when relevant terms first came into fashion, or who instigated pertinent fields of investigation. It is quite remarkable how many relevant terms have endured in the working vocabulary of stylistics into the new millennium, even though some terms I have decided to retire. It is an archive, but not one of historical relics. Still, terms can surprise you. Take BRICOLAGE, popular in 1960s structuralism because of the work of Claude Lvi-Strauss. Now revived in sociolinguistics, it aptly describes the way young people select items of clothing and ways of speaking to produce their own personal style. Many terms and ideas have not simply endured, but have great currency and power, despite tweakings or tinkerings: POLITENESS THEORY, Paul Grices CONVERSATIONAL MAXIMS and SPEECH ACT THEORY, for example. It is hard to believe that J.L. Austin formulated his ideas on speech acts fifty years ago (published 1962). The work of the Russian linguist-philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, unknown in Europe until well after the Second World War, continues to appeal to new generations of readers, and currently strikes a prescient chord with its stress on the need for critical and ethical responsibility and answerability. With Bakhtin in mind, I myself have tried to make a case for future work in ECO-STYLISTICS.

However, it is important to consider, as I also stated in my Introduction to the 2nd edition, that no flourishing discipline stands still; and given what Ronald Carter and Peter Stockwell (2008) rightly call the apparently boundless appetite of stylistic studies for incorporating ideas from a range of disciplines across the humanities and even sciences, it is not surprising that new perspectives must now be recorded, as well as fresh reappraisals and reorientations of established ideas and their terms. The past ten years, certainly, have witnessed the consolidation of COGNITIVE STYLISTICS, which has led to a revival of interest in many basic FIGURES from RHETORIC, and which has led me also to supplement entries such as BLENDING and FOREGROUND. CORPUS STYLISTICS and FORENSIC STYLISTICS, increasingly popular amongst students, have led to a revival of the dormant concepts of NORM and IDIOLECT, for example, and a refreshment of my entries on KEY and COLLOCATION. Stylistic studies are still heavily READER-oriented, whether in empirical work, or under the influence of new literary theories of ETHICS. Exciting work in sociolinguistics in relation to questions of VARIATION,

STYLE-SWITCHING and PERFORMATIVITY has led me to appraise the very concept of STYLE itself. Both literary critics and linguists have been engaged in the reassessment of CREATIVITY, which has led to a new debate about LITERARINESS.

At the same time, the past ten years have seen a broadening of the texts which form the basis of stylistic analysis: the printed word now supplemented by COMPUTER-MEDIATED and MULTIMODAL materials, with the necessary reappraisal therefore of terms like GENRE and MEDIUM. Stylistic terms and models in turn, however, have a lot to offer the students of media and also film, because of their helpful fusion of rhetoric, SEMIOTICS and CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS.

In another important sense this dictionary is also, very obviously, an encyclopedia. Unashamedly eclectic, like the subject of stylistics itself, it tries to display all the pertinent areas of knowledge which have been drawn upon for analysis, and which are potentially relevant to the particular interests of students, teachers and researchers. Some readers may be oriented towards literary criticism and theory; others towards media studies; still others to sociolinguistics. Not surprisingly, since many concepts have travelled from one discipline to another or have been in a dialogue with others, or have been redefined, this has led to a proliferation of senses for many terms, often confusing to students, which I have tried to elucidate in my numbered entries. The use of small capitals within an entry is for cross-reference: indicating that the word is defined elsewhere, and implying also that there are useful links to be made with other terms or concepts.