Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

Love etc
(2000) makes for an intriguing study of the literary speech
situation. Without giving too much away, Barnes’ novel is relayed entirely through
the unmediated utterances of its three main characters who appear to speak directly
to the reader. This unusual interactive situation can be explored using the models of
dialogue and discourse introduced across this thread.
More suggestions follow:
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Pratt suggests that because the literary speech situation imposes ‘silent and soli-
tary nonparticipation’, judging is felt to be a central part of the reader’s role in
literature. How accurate a reflection is this of your own reading experience?
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In what contemporary discourse contexts do we agree to become an Audience
in the sense outlined by Pratt? Following from this, to what extent has modern
interactive media affected the concept of the Audience? Does being an Audience
still require the concession of the floor to the speaker? Or has the communica-
tive dynamic of interactive film and television made the relationship between
speaker and Audience more problematic or tenuous?
COGNITIVE STYLISTICS: THE POETRY OF 
EMILY DICKINSON
In this reading, Margaret Freeman offers a cognitive stylistic analysis of certain gram-
matical patterns in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. In that it commonly breaches
everyday grammatical rules, Dickinson’s use of language can be challenging and it
often makes heavy interpretative demands on the reader. Of many structures that
might productively inform a cognitive stylistic analysis of her work, it is Dickinson’s
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C O G N I T I V E S T Y L I S T I C S : T H E P O E T R Y O F E M I L Y D I C K I N S O N
201
D10
Activity
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Activity
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special use of the ‘
-self
anaphor’ which is the focus of Freeman’s study. An 
anaphor
is an item of language which refers back to some antecedent in a text. More specif-
ically, the term 
-
self
anaphor
describes grammatical items like reflexive pronouns
(‘herself ’, ‘oneself ’) which have no fixed meaning of their own and which therefore
require a local textual referent for their interpretation. For example, in the sequence
‘Mary hurt herself ’, the meaning of the reflexive 
-self
anaphor ‘herself ’ can only 
be retrieved by locating it anaphorically in the earlier reference to ‘Mary’. Freeman
also draws on the concept of 
deixis
(see A2) in her analysis and argues, with respect
to Emily Dickinson, that this poet’s 
-self 
anaphors are grounded in mental spaces,
and, furthermore, that their use signals a projection from one mental space into
another.
Grounded spaces in the poetry of Emily Dickinson