STYLISTICS

LECTURE VII

PERSPECTIVES ON MEANING
Deictics triggers the following
questions
 Who is telling the story?
 Who is the narrator talking to?
 Where and when do the events take
place?
 From whose perspective is the story
told?
Given and new information
 Given information refers to
information which the speaker
assumes to be already known to the
addressee, because the latter is
supposed to have found it in the
wider context of commonly shared
knowledge about the world.
 New information refers to information
which the speaker assumes that the
addressee cannot have acquired
knowledge from one of the three
contextual factors (place, time,
person).
 Definite article ‘the’ is often an
indication of given information,
whereas the indefinite article ‘a’
usually signals new information.
 For example, it might be argued that
the narrator uses the definite phrases
‘the roof of my house’ and the tops of
two trees’ because the addressee
may be assumed to have the general
knowledge that houses have roofs
and trees have tops.
Ideological perspective
Ideological perspective is the speaker
or writer’s point of view—subjective
nature of the speaker’s perceptions
and observations. It is often
supported by modality and sentence
adverbs.
Modality and sentence adverbs
 Modality provides speakers with
linguistic means to express degrees
of commitment to the truth or validity
of what they are talking about, and to
mitigate the effect of their words on
the people they are talking to.
 Sentence adverbs express the
modality in that they convey his
attitude towards what he is claiming.
Conclusion
 In reading a literary work, content
(the ‘what’) cannot be separated from
form ( the ‘how’).