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Stylistics In Textual Analysis

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1. Introduction and Theoretical framework 1.1 stylistics Stylistics is the linguistic study of style in language. There has been a long debate among scholars about the role and definition of stylistics .Many scholars have tried to give their insights about the role of stylistics to the field of textual analysis. Coyle ( 1993) states that the purpose of stylistics is to uncover the literary language used by the author to formulate his message. stylistics then is concerned with revealing the aesthetic and artistic aspects of a text. Simpson ( 2004) provides a similar understanding of stylistics. He asserts that the role of the discipline is to explore the creativity in language usage . Simpson further …show more content…

The analyst can also investigate the use of definite or indefinite articles, demonstratives such as this or that, and examine the frequency in the usage of certain grammatical constructions ( comparative, superlative,…..). The researcher can examine the use of pronouns in the selected speeches. There have been researchers that have done studies and articles written about how politicians use pronouns in a strategic way to show power, solidarity or authority, for example if a speaker uses mostly the pronoun we, this will indicate his attempt to create a sense of unity with his audience. 1.2.3 Figures of speech Martha J. Kolln (1999) defines figurative language as the language that expresses meaning in nonliteral terms , characterized by figures of speech such as metaphors , similes , analogies and personification . For the analysis of the figures of speech in a text, leech and short provide the following categories: 1: Grammatical and lexical devices: Such as repetition ( anaphora ) and parallelism. 2: Phonological schemes: such as phonological patterns of rhyme, alliteration, assonance,

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