Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature

Book excerpt: This volume forms part of the Applied Linguistics and Language Study collection that looks at the field of analysing and appreciating literary texts. First published in 1975, this text makes a considerable contribution to extending our view of the principles underlying language teaching and curriculum design. The author begins by distinguishing the idea that discipline from the pedagogic subject in order to demonstrate that stylistics is Janus like in the way it can be treated, for example, at school or university, as a way from linguistics to literary study or the reverse. To understand this bidirectionality he explains distinctions between the linguist’s text and the critic’s messages by introducing the concept of discourse as a means through which to understand the communicative value of passages of language.