Pedagogical Stylistics

1. PEDAGOGICAL STYLISTICS

2. PEDAGOGICAL ASPECTS OF STYLISTICS
• A Stylistics approach teaches students how to look for and interpret stylistic
dimensions of a text.
• Students are made to learn how what is said is said and how meanings are made.
They are taught to know what makes the language of literature different from
everyday language, if it really is.
• The environment of our classes at the college level is lecture-based where teacher
remains at the helm of affairs and students are demanded to be patient listeners,
which makes them hardly participative.

3. ADVANTAGES OF THE STYLISTIC APPROACH
• If we adopt the stylistic approach to teach literature at the college level, it will help
the students understand the role of language in literature.
• Language is made up of words, structures and sentences and literature is made up
of these words, structures and sentences.
• Literature is language in its applied form and prepares a basis for the study of
language through various points of view.

4. • Every piece of literary writing is different from the other. They have similarities but
are never identical.
• Every piece of literature is unique with own peculiarities. Therefore, literature offers
as many models or varieties of language just as we many writers.
• How the writers use the same limited set of sounds with a variety of words,
structures, syntax and collocations – set the platform for the stylistic analysis of a
particular task.
• Students at the college level must be taught to recognize and focus on the style
markers used by the authors in their works which contribute to the effect of the
work.
• A style marker maybe recognized intuitively, or with the help of critics who
have analyzed the text and identified various style markers used by the authors.

6. • Povey (1972: 187) argues, literature helps to extend linguistic knowledge ‘by
giving evidence of extensive and subtle vocabulary usage, and
complex and exact syntax’.
• Carter (2014: 81) also emphasizes the value of using literature in an English
language teaching context by stating that ‘[t]he tools of stylistic analysis provide
points of entry into texts.
• Without a stylistic approach these texts may otherwise be seen as no more than
plots, or characters or themes’.
• In an example of a classroom activity that attempts to sensitize learners of English to
the more challenging and dynamic use of words, Badran (2007) foregrounds the
use of deviant collocations in his analysis of Jim Morrison’s song/poem ‘Awake’.

7. • Teaching language through literature presents language situated within a context
and, moreover, can offer the following advantages for ELT purposes:
● It provides a medium for language development, i.e. exposure to
linguistic complexity, idiomatic and figurative language, etc.
● It presents themes such as love, hate, jealousy, revenge, war, e.g. in
Shakespeare’s texts
● It offers different cultural perspectives and deepens socio-cultural
knowledge
● It promotes and encourages enjoyment of reading literary works. (For
a further list of the pedagogical merits of teaching language through
literature, see Hall, 2014.)