Why care about pedagogical stylistics?

Abstract

The teaching of stylistics in the modern day university classroom is a useful and worthy endeavour. Knowledge gained in such courses assists our undergraduate and graduate students in understanding how language, grammar and rhetoric function in texts. The knowledge they acquire leads them first to comprehend the basic grammatical and rhetorical concepts. This is followed by a second level of 'practical' knowledge, whereby students are able to analyse texts with the tools they have acquired at the first stage. The third stage is when students go into a mode of synthesizing all they have learned, which, in turn, allows them to move on to the production stage. Such a process is valuable, for example, in the contemporary university creative writing classroom. It is important to note that the process described here is not simply literary stylistics, but fundamentally pedagogical stylistics.The fact that a close, stylistic analysis of texts, literary or otherwise, for formative ends, is pedagogically valuable was something that was not lost on the teachers of the ancient world. In democratic, classical Athens, for example, the classrooms of Aristotle, Isocrates and Theophrastus were full of young men eager to learn the analytic skills of rhetoric, the forebear of modern day stylistics. Similarly, in the schools of rhetoric in Imperial Rome, Quintilian and his Roman colleagues knew the didactic worth of the close study of literary works: texts designed not just to delight but also to teach, as Horace famously noted. Nor was it lost on the countless dedicated schoolmasters of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. Indeed, right up to the end of the 18th century the grammatical and rhetorical study of style and language for pedagogical ends was still very much in vogue, at least in the UK: the work of Dr Hugh Blair, Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres at the University of Edinburgh is a salient case in point. So, to return to my opening remark: if the importance of such instruction, and the key role of pedagogy in it, was not lost on the stylistics of the past, why does it appear to be less valued in the stylistics of the present? In other words, why is it that pedagogical issues appear not always to be given the prominence or prestige they logically seem to deserve in our universities? Why, for example, do we stylisticians tend not to solely focus on pedagogical stylistic research? And why is it

Cognitive Effects and Text- Worlds in Dan Brown's Inferno

“…"The pedagogical aim of stylistics in teaching (literary) language, and how this language functions is based on how we are as readers-native and non-native-come from the word on the page to its meanings" (Norgaard et al, 2010, p. 37). Burke (2010) argues that the pedagogical stylistics could be described in some levels. It begins with teaching stylistics in the university classrooms.…”

The pedagogy of stylistics: Enhancing practice by flipping the classroom, using whiteboards and action research

“…Burke (2010) also asks, ‘why care about pedagogical stylistics’, which prompts further questions about the value of teaching stylistics. Through classical rhetorical approaches, stylistics can help students to write a stylistics paper and empower and motivate them to perform better.…”

“…A commitment to improving teaching and learning practices together with a critical reflection and evaluation of methods and approaches also go hand-in-hand. (See also the Language and Literature Special Issue on 'Pedagogical Stylistics', edited by Burke, 2010;Burke et al, 2012;Fogal, 2015;Short and Breen, 1988;Teranishi et al, 2015). Burke (2010) also asks, 'why care about pedagogical stylistics', which prompts further questions about the value of teaching stylistics.…”

“…(See also the Language and Literature Special Issue on 'Pedagogical Stylistics', edited by Burke, 2010;Burke et al, 2012;Fogal, 2015;Short and Breen, 1988;Teranishi et al, 2015). Burke (2010) also asks, 'why care about pedagogical stylistics', which prompts further questions about the value of teaching stylistics. Through classical rhetorical approaches, stylistics can help students to write a stylistics paper and empower and motivate them to perform better.…”

Exploring new territories in pedagogical stylistics: An investigation of high-school EFL students’ assessments

“…However, despite the growing publications in what has become known as pedagogical stylistics (e.g. Burke et al, 2012Burke et al, , 2016Carter, 2010;Clark and Zyngier, 2003;McRae, 2001), not much has been done in terms of evidence-based assessments of what actually occurs in the classroom (Fogal, 2015), especially in settings where English is not the first language. In his comprehensive article on the role of literature in foreign language learning and teaching, Paran (2008: 487) argues that the uneasy relationship between language and literature teaching results from the fact that "although there is a strong element of empirical enquiry within stylistics, this empirical approach has not yet extended to a rigorous examination of classrooms and language learning and even less so to L2 learners.…”