Importance

of Practical
Stylistics
Prepared by: Brix Augstheer
Macaraya
What is the importance of practical
stylistics?
©It can provide the means whereby the student of literature can
relate a piece of literary writings to his own experience of
language and so can extend that experience.
©It can assist in the transfer of interpretative skills, on essential
purpose of literary education.
©It can provide a procedure for demystifying literary texts.
©The focus of a literary text in itself provides a context in which the
learning of aspects of language can be positively enjoyed.
Grid of Relationships of Stylistics
with other Disciplines

DISCIPLINES: LINGUISTICS LITERARY CRITICISM

STYLISTICS

SUBJECTS: LANGUAGE LITERATURE

Some Useful Concepts in
Stylistics:
 Foregrounding - emphasis on a textual feature; may be
achieved through unusual or strange collocations, meaningful
repetitions, contrast, deliberate deviation from the norms/
rules/ conventions
 Collocation - the co-occurrence of certain words
 Diegesis and Mimesis - Diegesis is telling/ narrating while
mimesis is showing.
Examples of collocations: Commonly used collocations:
Take a break Idioms
Break a leg Cliché
Make a noise Listemes
Keep the change Phrasal verbs
Gone with wind
Apple of my eye
A barber’s story
Bibidi-Babidi-Bo
Example in Foregrounding:
One of the first places Julia always ran to when they arrived in G---
was The Dark Walk. It is a laurel walk, very old almost gone wild, a
lofty midnight tunnel of smooth, sinewy branches. Underfoot the
tough brown leaves are never dry enough to crackle: There’s always
a suggestion of damp and cool trickle. She raced into it.
(The Trout by Sean O’Faolain, 1980-82)
Example in Diegesis:
“A twisted piece of paper lay half burned upon the hearthrug;
he picked it up, and unfolded it, in order to get a better pipe-
light by folding the other way of the paper. As he did so,
absently glancing at the penciled writing upon the fragment of
the thin paper, a portion of a name caught his eye-a portion of
the name that was most in his thoughts.
- “Lady Audley’s Secret” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Examples in Mimesis:
“Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical
and our hearts are open” -Albus Dumbledore
- Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire by J.K Rowling
“Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to
control your fear, and how to be free from it. –Four
- Divergent by Veronica Roth
“That’s always seemed so ridiculious to me, that people want to be around
someone because they’re pretty. It’s like picking your breakfast cereals based
on color instead of taste. –Margo Roth Spiegelman
- Paper Towns by John Green
Reference vs. Representation

 Reference is the indexical function of language, pointing to

different aspects of reality.

 Representation is manipulating language to stand for an

experience/ situation.
THAT’S ALL THANK YOU!