This book represents a new direction at the interface between the fields of stylistics and corpus linguistics, namely the use of a corpus methodology to investigate the ways in which people's words and thoughts are presented in written narratives. A 260,000 word electronic corpus of late 20th century written texts, including fiction, news reports and (auto)biographies is analysed by the authors, providing a detailed account of new theoretical insights, comparisons between different text types and detailed accounts of individual texts.

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Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose examines how readers interact with literary works, how they understand and are moved by them. Mick Short considers how meanings and effects are generated in the three major literary genres, carrying out stylistic analysis of poetry, drama and prose fiction in turn. He analyses a wide range of extracts from English literature, adopting an accessible approach to the analysis of literary texts which can be applied easily to other texts in English and in other languages. This volume provides a clear and broad-ranging introduction to stylistic analysis - the first to cover all three literary genres in detail. The introduction provides a very useful overview of stylistics as a whole and discusses the links between linguistics and literary criticism. Detailed analysis of each genre follows, with exercises designed to develop ideas further. There is also extended discussion of the exercises and suggestions for further readings for those interested in carrying out their own stylistic analyses. A particularly useful feature of the book is the series of check sheets of style features to look for when analysing texts, which occur at the ends of chapters. This study will be of particular interest to undergraduate students interested in stylistic analysis and the accounts of up-to-date analytical methods will also be relevant to advanced students and researchers.

This volume provides a clear and broad-ranging introduction to stylistic analysis. The introduction provides an overview of stylistics as a whole and discusses the links between linguistics and literary criticism. Detailed analysis of each genre follows, with exercises designed to develop ideas further.

This book combines stylistic analysis with corpus linguistics to present an innovative account of the phenomenon of speech, writing and thought presentation - commonly referred to as 'speech reporting' or 'discourse presentation'. This new account is based on an extensive analysis of a quarter-of-a-million word electronic collection of written narrative texts, including both fiction and non-fiction. The book includes detailed discussions of: The construction of this corpus of late twentieth-century written British narratives taken from fiction, newspaper news reports and (auto)biographies The development of a manual annotation system for speech, writing and thought presentation and its application to the corpus. The findings of a quantitive and qualitative analysis of the forms and functions of speech, writing and thought presentation in the three genres represented in the corpus. The findings of the analysis of a range of specific phenomena, including hypothetical speech, writing and thought presentation, embedded speech, writing and thought presentation and ambiguities in speech, writing and thought presentation. Two case studies concentrating on specific texts from the corpus. Corpus Stylistics shows how stylistics, and text/discourse analysis more generally, can benefit from the use of a corpus methodology and the authors' innovative approach results in a more reliable and comprehensive categorisation of the forms of speech, writing and thought presentation than have been suggested so far. This book is essential reading for linguists interested in the areas of stylistics and corpus linguistics.

Exploring the Language of Drama introduces students to the stylistic analysis of drama. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the contributors use techniques of language analysis, particularly from discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, to explore the language of plays.
The contributors demonstrate the validity of analysing the text of a play, as opposed to focusing on performance. Divided into four broad, yet interconnecting groups, the chapters:
* open up some of the basic mechanisms of conversation and show how they are used in dramatic dialogue
* look at how discourse analysis and pragmatic theories can be used to help us understand characterization in dialogue
* consider some of the cognitive patterns underlying dramatic discourse
* focus on the notion of speech as action.
there is also a chapter on how to analyse an extract from a play and write up an assignment.