Stylistics: Using Linguistics to Explore Texts and Meaning

Uncover the real meaning behind the words you read and hear with stylistics

Stylistics is the study of linguistic style in texts. It helps to explain how politicians mislead; how novelists and poets move their readers; how advertisers persuade us to buy their products and how the media influence public opinion. Stylistics empowers students to become critical readers by developing rigorous techniques of linguistic analysis.

Academically, stylistics sits at the interface between many other disciplines, including Literary Studies, Linguistics, History, Politics, Sociology and Psychology. If you’d like to learn more, this four-week course from the University of Huddersfield is the perfect way to begin your stylistics journey.

See stylistics in action across different situations

By examining the language choices that are made in different contexts, you’ll be able to develop your critical reading ability. Armed with these skills, you’ll be able to analyse and interpret the daily messages you receive from every sphere of your life.

Hone your stylistic analysis skills

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to identify stylistic devices, understand how language choices attract our attention, and compare the speech patterns of different people.

You’ll also know how to perform corpus stylistics, using simple computer analysis of textual patterns and interpreting their relation to a speaker or writer’s style and effect.

Learn from leading linguistics experts

With its established track record in corpus stylistics, stylistic analysis, and other areas related to this field, this course from the University of Huddersfield is the perfect place to study this fascinating branch of linguistics.

You’ll learn how to identify stylistic devices, foregrounding, and characterisation, and gain invaluable insight into everything you read or hear!

This course is designed for anyone considering university English Language or Linguistics, teaching these subjects at A-level, new to studying Stylistics, or just interested in the effects of language choices in different contexts.

In Week 4 of the course we’ll be using two pieces of software, English-Corpora.org and AntConc. English-Corpora.org is web-based. All you need to do to use it is create a login. We’ll show you how to do this at the relevant point in the course. The other piece of software, AntConc, is something that you’ll need to download from https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/. It’s a small program and we’ll give you full instructions on how to download it when we get to the relevant point in the course.

This course is designed for anyone considering university English Language or Linguistics, teaching these subjects at A-level, new to studying Stylistics, or just interested in the effects of language choices in different contexts.

• Describe what is meant by the term stylistics
• Identify foregrounding and explain how language choices attract our attention
• Explain the role of language in the process of characterisation
• Compare different ways of presenting the speech of other people and the potential effects associated with these techniques
• Perform simple computer analysis of textual patterns and understand their relation to style