DISCOURSE, STYLISTICS AND PRAGMATICS: A STUDY OF CONVERGENCE (ENGLISH AND LINGUISTIC PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
Abstract
Discourse, stylistics and pragmatics are sub-fields of linguistics that have attained independent statuses in the arts. With the seeming differences between these fields, there exist a lot of relationships that connect the three areas of study together. This study is an attempt to examine the similarities in relationships between discourse, pragmatics and stylistics in their interpretation of language in communication. The methodology adopted is a descriptive/library research. Findings from the study reveal that discourse, pragmatics and stylistics are different but inter-related fields that share a lot of relationships in language analysis even though their goals and methods of analyzing language are different.
Introduction
The concern of linguists before the advent of Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics and Stylistics, was basically to study the structural pattern and form of language without much regard for the context and other features that shape meaning. According to Olateju (7), much later, however, ‘the attention of language scholars was shifted from language form to language function. Consequently, many scholars in humanities and social sciences became keenly interested in the study of Discourse, Pragmatics and Stylistics’ (italics mine).
Discourse, Pragmatics and Stylistics are different but closely related linguistic disciplines that are inseparable. There is as much relationship between them as there are differences in their linguistic approach to interpreting meaning. It is, sometimes, not easy to draw a line of demarcation between Discourse, Pragmatics and Stylistics as there is hardly any exercise on Discourse without a bit of Pragmatic or Stylistic input. However, Discourse is much broader in its analysis than the other two disciplines. While Discourse is essentially communication; Stylistics is concerned with the study of the pattern and style of what is communicated; while Pragmatics examines what is being communicated from the speaker-intended meaning. This study is an attempt to discuss the intricate relationship between Discourse, Pragmatics and Stylistics in order to examine the different ways they each approach linguistic meaning.
An Overview of Discourse
Discourse is a discipline that has no stable definition. This is because a lot of 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). According to Johnstone, it is ‘actual instances of communication in the medium of language’ (2). 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 word ‘discourse’ is from the Latin ‘discursus‘ which denotes ‘conversation, speech’ (Taiwo 14).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 it is commonly used today. 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 to function properly. Thus, ‘it becomes very impossible to understand the linguistic items used in discourse without a context’ (Ahmad 1).
