DISCOURSE AND STYLISTICS: METHODS OF ANALYSIS (ENGLISH AND LINGUISTIC PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
Abstract
In the wake of a revolutionary change of interest from language form to language function, attention of many language scholars have been shifted from the structural pattern of language to the function the language is used to perform in social discourses. The present study is one of such endeavours, and essentially explored the fields of Discourse and Stylistics by pointing out their different, but related, methods of text analysis. A brief analysis of an excerpt of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Democracy Day Speech of 29thMay, 2015 revealed that Discourse investigates more and reproduces more meaning from a text than Stylistics. Stylistics is only a tool used in Discourse.
- Introduction
Prior to the advent of Discourse Analysis and Stylistics, the preoccupation of many linguists was basically the study of the structural pattern and form of language without much regard for the context and other features that shape meaning. Over the years however, the attention of language scholars has been shifted from language form to language function. Consequently, many scholars in humanities and social sciences have become keenly interested in the study of Discourse and Stylistics (Olateju 7).
Discourse and Stylistics are two different but closely related linguistic disciplines that are inseparable. The relationship between them can be likened to the proverbial controversy in the actual maternity of the hen and the egg. This is because it is very difficult to draw a line of demarcation between Discourse and Stylistics. While on the one hand, there is hardly any exercise on Discourse without a bit of Stylistic input, Discourse, on the other hand, “is broader in its analysis (Aziz n.pag). While Discourse is essentially communication, Stylistics on the other hand is concerned with the study of the pattern and style of what is communicated. In this study, we shall attempt to discuss Discourse and Stylistics and explore the various ways each of them approach analysis of a given text. To do this properly, we shall analyze paragraph five of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Democracy Day Speech on 29th May, 2016 to reveal the levels or methods of text analysis in Discourse and Stylistics.
- What is Discourse?
The word ‘discourse’ comes from Latin ‘discursus‘ which denotes ‘conversation, speech’ (Taiwo 14). According to Johnstone, it is “actual instances of communication in the medium of language” (2). Discourse is a discipline that has no stable definition. This is because so many scholars have given varied definitions to it based on their views of the subject matter. The common definition is given by Stubbs. He describes Discourse as “language above the sentence or above the clause” (1). Discourse is meaning communicated far above what is said. The study of Discourse is indeed the “study of many aspects of language use (Fasold 65). Discourse is essentially the study of language in use.
The term Discourse was first used by Zellig Harris in a paper he presented in 1952. As a structural linguist, he did not use Discourse in the sense that is commonly used now. He used it only as a sequence of utterances. It was in the late 1960s that scholars began to use the term as an approach to the study of social interaction. (Taiwo 16). Discourse was fully developed in the 1970s as a critique of cognitive process in communication. It is based on the notion that language needs a context for it to function properly. Thus, it becomes very impossible to understand the linguistic items used in discourse without a context (Ahmad 1).
Discourse is viewed as social performance or a social action. It is a relative social phenomenon that depends solely on wide range of disciplines, such as Psychology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Anthropological Linguistics, Sociology, Cognitive and Social Psychology. This fact is corroborated by Fairclough when he opines that “Discourse constitutes the social. Three dimensions of the social are distinguished- knowledge, social relations, and social identity-and these correspond respectively to three major functions of language” (8).
Discourse, viewed from the linguistic perspective, is, in turn, composed of a wide range of disciplines, such as Stylistics, Pragmatics, Conversational Analysis and Speech Act Theory (Ahmad 2).
