McIntyre, Dan. ‘Towards an Integrated Corpus Stylistics’. Topics in Linguistics, issue 16 (December 2015), 59–68. doi:10.2478/topling-2015-0011
Are there angels singing? Or is it just in my head?
Where has this article been hiding all this time?!
McIntyre offers an insightful approach to the two strands of stylistics that have become most prevalent in stylistics since the 1990s. Most significantly, to me: it clearly describes the position that I have taken myself, in a much more articulate and clearly thought-out manner than what I have done so far.
McIntyre argues that ‘cognitive stylistics’ has been defined infelicitously, and that if the term is to have any value, we need to change the way we think about what corpus stylistics is, specifically by integrating it with other stylistic methods, especially cognitive stylistics.
Cognitive stylistics is usually defined as the application of corpus linguistics methods to the study of literary language. However, he points out, other sub-fields of linguistics are not designated as such when they use corpus methods; a corpus-based study of syntax, for example, is not known as ‘corpus syntax’. Defining corpus stylistics in this way, then, first runs the risk of ‘implicitly suggesting that stylistics is not a constituent sub-discipline of linguistics’ (p. 60). Second, this definition of corpus stylistics often incorrectly implies that other types of stylistic study lack rigor (p. 60). Third, stylistics is not always concerned with literary language. Short and Leech argue that stylistics is properly defined as the linguistic study of style, in any context (see p. 61), and in some parts of the world, the discipline focuses primarily on style in non-literary contexts. From all of this, McIntyre argues that if the term ‘corpus stylistics’ is to be a useful categorization, then we must define it anew. The definition he offers is ‘the application of theories, models and frameworks from stylistics in corpus analysis’ (p. 61).
McIntyre then discusses the distinction between corpus stylistics and cognitive stylistics, ultimately suggesting that they can and should be integrated more closely (at least in studies that will clearly benefit by including both modes of analysis). Although the two sub-disciplines have frequently been at loggerheads, they need not be and, indeed, each can gain substantially by integrating the other and working as a cohesive whole in analyzing style: ‘The two endeavours are not mutually exclusive and if we follow this path, we are likely to overlook significant insights that might be gained in one area and have relevance for the other’ (p. 63).
In the following two sections, McIntyre offers analyses of two texts, using this kind of integrated approach: First, he examines direct speech in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; second, at dialogue and authenticity in the HBO television series Deadwood. In the first case, he uses corpus methods to verify that direct speech is more prevalent in Haddon’s novel than in most other fictional texts, and then integrates this finding with the notion of mind style, arguing that the high incidence of direct speech in the text is one manifestation of the main character’s unique mind style (he is generally assumed to have Asperberger’s Syndrome) (pp. 63–64). In the second case, he uses corpus methods to establish the anachronistic nature of much of the dialogue (particularly expletives) in the series Deadwood; having already indicated that criticism of the series has noted show’s immersive style, despite obvious anachronisms (it is set in the 1870s), McIntyre draws on deictic shift theory to account for this immersive experience, arguing that the anachronistic language does not reinstantiate the viewer’s real-world context—as we would normally expect—since the anachronisms act with the level of pragmatic force (i.e., swearing) that modern-day viewers expect, whereas using the expletives that were common in the time period (e.g., goldarned, tarnation) would now have a comic effect and would therefore detract from the intended pragmatic force.
Old English Stylistics 