Why does a headline capture our attention? An advert slogan stay long in our mind? A speech sway our opinion? A song carry our emotions away? A joke make us laugh? And a school text leave us blank? Essentially, it is because of the intricate workings of language; often, it is not so much what is said as how it is said that impresses us most. And this applies also to the language of literature. Rhyme and metaphor are not the exclusive property of poetry; while a poet can use the same words as an army officer or a salesperson. Literature shares many of the features of everyday language, and this course will take us through the language that is used in a spectrum of multimodal texts of differing degrees of literariness, including poems, plays, stories, songs, jokes, advertisements, political and religious communications, regulations, textbooks and technical manuals. We will examine how linguistic forms and literary devices are related to aesthetic effects and ideological functions. We will analyse and discuss how the choice and the patterning of words, sounds and images orchestrate to embody, mediate and elicit feelings and thoughts, and views and values.

Topics are: Towards characterizing literary linguistics; Collocation, deviation and word play; Prosody, parallelism and performance; Discourse into discourse; Narration and representation of speech and thought; Reader positioning and response.  

This course treats literature as discourse and introduces the theory and practice of stylistics. It is designed to equip students with the techniques for making a critical analysis of and an affective response to the subtle workings of language in multimodal texts of differing degrees of literariness. Since the course explores the relationship between language and literature, steering towards an interface, students are encouraged to select and refine concepts, topics, issues, materials and approaches they find most relevant and engaging.