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26 - Language and Literature

from Part III - SFL in Application

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2019

By
Donna R. Miller
Edited by
Geoff Thompson ,
Wendy L. Bowcher ,
Lise Fontaine  and
David Schönthal
Geoff Thompson
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
Wendy L. Bowcher
Affiliation:
Sun Yat-Sen University, China
Lise Fontaine
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
David Schönthal
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
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Summary

This chapter begins with the SFL take on language in literature, putting forward Hasan’s definition of ‘verbal art’ and her ‘double-articulation’ descriptive and analytical model (1989; 2007). Immediately emphasized is that, in contrast to mainstream stylistics (e.g. Simpson 2014), Hasan’s Systemic Socio-Semantic Stylistics (SSS) upholds literature as a ‘special’ text type, one requiring an equally ‘special’ theoretical-analytical framework. In Section 2 central inspirations of the model are mapped out. SSS “[…] predates the 1960s’ structural stylistics” (Hasan 2007:21), indeed going back to the Russian Formalists and Prague Circle scholars. Especially vital for its modelling is Mukařovský’s notion of ‘foregrounding’ (1977, 1978), but the case for slotting Jakobson into the framework (e.g., Miller 2016a) is also argued. Among remarks on other stylisticians, particular attention is fittingly drawn to Halliday’s crucial, and complementary, role in SSS ‘history’. A sample illustration of verbal art analysis with D. H. Lawrence’s ‘Lonely, Lonesome, Loney – O!’ follows in Section 3, while Section 4 briefly notes select recent research within SFL, and points to some possible future directions, also pondering the supporting role played by CL methods in exploring the language in literature texts (e.g., Miller and Luporini 2015, 2018).
Type
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The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics , pp. 690 - 714
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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