edinburgh university press pragmatic stylistics mar 2006

[...]... performed is in some way malformed: this is the case in the extract above, when Marlow comments on the state of Kurtz’s soul This passage shows that Marlow and Kurtz have at least hubris in common 2.3.2 Expressive speech acts Expressive speech acts are those that reveal the speaker’s attitude, such as congratulating, condoling, or expressing pleasure They have a strongly interpersonal function One may therefore... narrative proceeds in the present tense, with occasional occurrences of the perfect in summarising passages: The doctor has scrutinised the bodies, the police have taken their statements, they have examined and photographed the room (1971/1974: 89) The present perfect is used here to mark the current relevance Pragmatics and Stylistics 9 of the event, and return to the base line of the narrative Leech calls... EXPRESSIONS There are a number of significant differences between most written and spoken discourse This applies particularly to deictic expressions Deictics are ‘pointing’ words They include tensed verbs (temporal deixis), personal pronouns, demonstratives (these, this, that), and time and place expressions such as now, then, here, yesterday, today, and so forth These words relate our linguistic expression... perspective of narrator or character is invoked I will now consider in some detail how deictic expressions work in written texts 1.4.1 Pronouns In one crucial respect fictional discourse differs from other types of discourse As Widdowson (1975: 50–3) shows, the referents of the pronominal system differ from Pragmatics and Stylistics 5 that of spoken language The ‘I’ of the lyric poet cannot be identified with the... differs interestingly from standard language Thus the pragmatic interpretation of a perfect tense differs from the interpretation of the simple past 1.4.4 Present tense Stanzel (1984: 22–44) draws attention to the widespread use of the present tense in texts such as synopses, chapter headings and author’s notes He considers that this Pragmatics and Stylistics 7 signals that the narrative is ‘unmediated’:... text differently according to what we bring to it: we cannot assume that it has a single, invariant meaning for all readers Since Pragmatics is the study of language in use (taking into account elements which are not covered by grammar and semantics), it is understandable that stylistics has become increasingly interested in using the insights it can offer We are in a world of (relatively) unstable meanings;... characters are predestined to carry out the plot, just as the unfortunate 10 Pragmatic Stylistics Baron is in this novel Lister’s comment is thus concerned with the nature of narrative A seamless web is created by the congruence of plot, narrative technique and the comments thereby implied on the nature of fiction There is a marked contrast between this novel, where the instantaneous present tense is... nature of her activity It is clearly distinct from other uses of the present tense discussed above Pragmatics and Stylistics 11 1.4.5 Suspension of narrative When a narrator temporarily abandons his narratorial role to generalise, comment, or otherwise depart from his storytelling role, the tense often marks this departure, by a shift from the past to the simple present The narrator may engage in generalisations... the narrative proper The precise effect of the change in tense will vary according to the context and perhaps the norms established in the text, but its primary function is to mark some change in the narrative mode It is this use of the present tense, marking a departure from – or better, a comment on – the narrative that we have when the narrator addresses the reader: It is not to be supposed that Miss... indirect speech acts; they simplify analysis and are thoroughly pragmatic in their attention to context rather than syntactic form In the case of the Hemingway extract cited above, the question is clearly a complaint, not a request for information (which is available in any case to the speaker, who knows quite well that the man is dying, 20 Pragmatic Stylistics and has a right to be upset) It offers a solution . Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Linguistics Series Editors: Alan Davies and Keith Mitchell Pragmatic Stylistics Elizabeth Black Edinburgh University Press © Elizabeth Black, 2006 Edinburgh University. Editors’ Preface v Acknowledgements vii Acronyms viii Glossary ix Introduction 1 1Pragmatics and Stylistics 2 2Pragmatic Theories 17 3Signposts 36 4Narrative Voices 53 5Direct and Indirect Discourse. perle wythouten spotte’. Series Editors’ Preface This series of single-author volumes published by Edinburgh University Press takes a contemporary view of applied linguistics. The intention is to make provision